


A Matter of Luck

by stillmadaboutpetra



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety Disorder, Anxious Katsuki Yuuri, Coming to terms with life, Family, Light Angst, Love, Magic Realism, Minimal skating, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Romance, Siblings, Slice of Life, dance instructor Yuuri, omamori, original concept
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:42:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9115408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: Victor, a Charm of Good Fortune, can make anyone's dreams come true. Except for his own. And, for some reason, except for Katsuki Yuuri's.





	1. Hasetsu

**Author's Note:**

> this is a massive change from my normal writing but makes sense when its for YOI and not SNK. sorry victor is a swan for the first chapter.

Hasetsu did not often see cold storms like this. Wild winds and whipping rain, yes, even broiling fogs off the sea. The snow tended to come in mild exhales, at least nearer to the shore and at the lowlands. The tall mountains stirred their own trouble, pitching it down on gentler folks at their feet. But with global climate change, people all across the world were slowly adjusting to extremes and lurking storms.  
  
A clash of fronts was the sudden alarm raised by the meteorologists.  
  
“Yuuri, you’ll have to help us bring in the statues and ornaments from the baths. I don’t want anything damaged by this storm,” Toshiya called out to his son. The TV glimmered, swaths of red and green storm front clouds chasing across Japan’s coastline. A surprise storm, out of nowhere!  
  
Yuuri, rinsing dishes with his mother, leaned against the sink to look out the window. A dark sky crawled like murder. That was the last thing they needed. If the weather really turned sour, Minako and Yuuko would both close their respective businesses. Minako wouldn’t dream of having her student out to the studio and Yuuko had no reason to even unlock the rink for the zero skaters that would come. And so, there went Yuuri’s fun and his jobs.  
  
He was an instructor at the dance studio and Ice Castle, part time at each. Minako had him run the beginners courses for a few different rounds of students while Takeshi had hired Yuuri back when Yuuko had gotten pregnant and in the subsequent time following the delivery as she raised her rambunctious triplets. This busyness, combined with helping his parents at Yu-topia, kept Yuuri in check. He biked or ran all around town, kept his body moving, his days full, and this….usually helped put him to bed. His quiet and small life in his hometown couldn’t swallow him with its vague emptiness at night if he made himself tired enough.  
  
Just looking at the clouds roll in boded ill for Katsuki Yuuri.   
  
It hailed. At first cloud break, the sky shattered and dropped pellets at them, making the roofs sound like tin and toys. Then, the temperature caught up with the atmosphere and the hail shivered into sleet and then snow, back and forth. The wind picked up, sliced around the mountains, and the ocean groaned awake, dredging up the belly aches of volcanoes so that the air smelled not of boiling salt but of sulphur and animal, like hot oil that cooled quick with ones cold breaths, settling on the tongue thickly. It was unthinkable weather. The baths steamed meekly, bullied by what came from on high. The guests staying at Yu-Topia were cowed, grumbling softly, gathered at windows to watch. It stormed for two days, relentless, shaking. The slats of Yu-Topia rang and rang with the weather.  
  
Hiroko broke out kotatsus and filled the inn with the smell of cooking. Yosenabe because the closer markets and grocers had been wiped of goods. She had to make do and she did. Yu-topia was impenetrable, her good will and fat smile enough to put even the orneriest of men at ease.  
  
“It’s seriously weird,” Mari commented, sipping on a cold beer. She and Yuuri were up after most of the patrons had gone to bed and the cleaning was done. The storage closet was packed with pretty much everything the two of them could possible lug inside. With their dad’s bad back and mom needing to keep the place running, it was a lucky thing they had two helpful kids! A cooler of beer and a box of karinto dad had found somewhere (Yuuri stopped himself from searching for an indication of its date) were their just rewards.  
  
“I guess it’s better it started as rain otherwise we’d be shoveling snow for days,” Yuuri mumbled around the aluminum lip of his beer. “If it lets up tomorrow, I’m going to check on the rink. Yuuko’s worried about the power lines but Takeshi doesn’t want her going out.”  
  
“What, so they’re sending you?” Mari eyeballs her baby brother. “What a dedicated coach, baby bro.”  
  
“They have a family. At least if I trip and die in the ice, I’m not leaving behind anyone,” Yuuri reasons with puffed cheeks. He flicks the tab on his can, its ring dull and short, and chugs the rest, belching loudly thereafter. Someone’s got to do it.  
  
That night in bed, Yuuri couldn’t sleep. Instead, he watched and rewatched his friend Phichit’s routines posted on his Instagram. Yuuri had met the Thai skater by chance right out of college when Phichit and his family had been on a brief vacation in Japan. They’d stopped by Ice Castle so their son, who was in professional skating, could practice a little. Phichit had been so kind and bubbly, even Yuuri was enamored by the easy friendship, even if it was now relegated to digital. He likes to think he’s a grounding presence for Phichit, someone outside of the world of ice skating who still knows all the technical terms.  
  
‘I see you cyber stalking me Yuuri’ Phichit DM’d him. Yuuri rolled over in bed, squinting at his phone. ‘Why are you awake?’  
  
‘I could say the same thing for you’ Yuuri typed back. He ached with a depressive fatigue that wouldn’t let him lay comfortably even as his eyes burned for sleep. Small. He had a small life. He just wanted to watch his friend go on to his dreams in the dark of his bedroom.  
\--  
Yuuri doesn’t trip and fall and die. He doesn’t even need his umbrella. The storm looms overhead, mellowed; the sun tries and fails to break through, but it isn’t near-night with darkness. There are few cars passing by; some people wave at Yuuri. Locals. A tourist asks for directions. The weather is passing and people return to their lives. The ice had just been a pause, a breath; nothing could quiet the busy hum of daily chore.  
  
It took longer than normal to get to Ice Castle, Yuuri taking a leisurely pace. He wouldn’t want to slip on the lingering ice. Farther into the town, at the main center, workers were scraping and salting. He’d hope for it to melt naturally but the temperature had taken a steady low. Without the wind, the sea was slate. Yuuri paused crossing in cross the small bridge that traversed an inlet, looking out across a monochrome of gray.  
  
“Takeshi?” Yuuri rang from inside Ice Castle. “H-hey. Everything’s good at the rink….mhmm. No damage that I saw. I really didn’t’ see much other than some branches brought down…Yes, I’m skating. I came out here, I thought I’d….yes…I’m testing the ice’s integrity. Yes! Okay, Takeshi. Talk to you tomorrow.”  
  
Yuuri slid his phone back into the pocket of his coat hanging over the wall of the rink. He pushed off, gliding with a shallow scratch of noise. He had turned on the lights to make sure none of the wiring had gotten damaged, not that’d he’d have any clue what to do if it had other than told Takeshi. With such a cloudy day, Yuuri could get away with opening the skylight, and he wanted to, but no telling if there was ice up on the roof that might mess it up. He made due with the outer lights, pale yellows melting under the blades of his skates.  
  
When Takeshi had become the manager, granted a lot of control by a distant and non-present owner who swept up the income and managed the licensing but little else, Takeshi had lobbied for a glass ceiling. And he’d gotten it. Above the rink, panes of glass let the sky open up over the ice. They covered it during the day so the sun wouldn’t melt the ice, but now they hosted night skates and special skates for firework shows. Lights along the inside of the wall would paint colors, but the stars would be above, kissing down at them. In The winter, with the early sunsets, Yuuri found himself under the stars and moon almost everyday, caught in the middle of two glistening planes.  
  
He passed a few laps in silence, swaying and dancing figure eights. He loved the solitude but wouldn’t risk too much footwork and certainly no jumps without someone else at the rink. Safety first! he taught his students. Ice Castle did okay but the bleachers never filled for anything more than local competitions or kids loitering and chattering while they took breaks. It did just as well as his parents’ onsen, Yuuri guessed. It did just as well as any small business in Hasetsu. It endured. It was doing better than the past, actually, with the brain power and love of the Nishigoris pumping into its creative energies. They hosted all kinds of skating events. And Yuuri was a proper skating coach, just about. He was hoping to get some full-time students soon, hopefully. Maybe. He got them good enough for coaches in major cities to swing by and sweep them away to better schools and scholarships and promises of futures if they sweated out their youth. The social media page for Ice Castle boasted lots of little rising stars for the pride of Japan, and though Hasetsu was a name just finding its way back onto people’s lips and into travel pamphlets and websites, his town still had a long way to go to flourishing. Ends were met.  
  
The ringing of his phone broke Yuuri from his pensive thoughts.  
  
“Coming, coming, sshh,” he whispered to his phone. “Ah, Mari… Hello?”  
  
“Oh, good, you’re not dead,” his sister greeted dryly. “That’s all. Get home, mom’s worrying.”  
  
She hung up. Yuuri hung his head, laughing briefly. Such love his family held for him.  
  
Yuuri headed home, the world just as he’d left it: still and poised, like a held breath. He expected a cloud burst by night, a heavy saturation in the air pressing against his cheek like a lover’s temper.  
  
Just as he’d looked out at the ocean as he crossed the bridge headed towards Ice Castle, so again did he leaving. But this time, there was a bullet hole fracture in the layers of gray. Below the bridge and towards the road, washed in by the licking tongue of the waves and now pitifully crushed on the rocky bank, lay some creature of feather. Yuuri froze, struck by the sad image. It laid perfectly whole, white feathers well and truly dirty with mud, not a speck of red to be seen. A morbid and childish curiosity kept him looking, leaning into the rail of the bridge to peer down for some indication of species.  
  
Two great wings unfurled in a fit, surprising Yuuri. He gasped out into the day.  
  
“Hang on!” he called to the bird; the sound of stiff feathers battling against the stoic bank caught to his ears. Hopping in place, searching for the best route down, he eventually had to run to the edge of the bridge and slip underneath the guard rail of the road. His momentum sent him scrabbling downward, body falling and legs barely keeping up, his trainers squelching in wet earth and ankles daring his fool headedishness to push them into more treacherous territory so they could give out and thwart his noble goals. He landed gracelessly beside the bird, heaving for breath and shaking.  
  
“H-hey, stop, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” Yuuri advised, hands up and hovering. The struggle of its wings ceased and a long sender neck uncurled, rose; a black face peered at Yuuri, small beaded eyes aglow with a frightening clarity of mind. “A swan?”  
  
Yuuri scrambled backwards despite his heroic intentions. He’s seen swans and geese for for people’s ankles and knees with monstrous conviction. Phichit himself was even the source of Yuuri’s knowledge about their small needly-like mouths. But the creature didn’t hiss or spit or squawk. It stared.  
  
“Get a hold of yourself, Yuuri!” Yuuri put a hand to his forehead, groaning. The swan finally tooted at him. Yuuri thrust a finger at it, not exactly the calming gesture the situation called for. “I’m going to rescue you so don’t bite me. Don’t bite me. Don’t bite me. Nice swan. Good swan. Dirty swan, gosh, you poor thing.”  
  
Yuuri kept up his narration as he picked the swan up; he couldn’t decide if it was heavier or lighter than he expected. “You’re a turkey,” he found himself appraising, cradling the thing in his arms. It swung its dark face around to him again and this would surely be when he lost his nose or an eye or his entire life but the thing gave a squeaky honk and curled its neck into its back and compacted itself in his arms. “You must be really sick if you’re not screaming,” Yuuri worried. “Oh, shit, how am gonna get you to a vet? Are you dying? Nothing looked broken.”  
  
Maybe it’d be best to take it home first and get Mari to give him a ride. Yes, duh, he had to. He didn’t even know where there was a clinic or if one would be open.  
  
Yuuri looks down at the swan, cradled in his arms. He could make it home carrying it but it’d be a close call. And, oh gosh…getting back up the bank. Yuuri said a prayer for grace and fortune and picked his way back up the steep incline, trying not to jostle the poor bird. And…he made it. He ducked under the rail, blinking in surprise at his own capabilities. And not a minute later walking did Minako pull to a stop beside him.  
  
“How did you manage to end up like this?” she called from the open window.  
  
“Minako!”  
  
“Get in, Yuuri.”  
  
“You must be a lucky swan,” Yuuri whispered to the bird. It tooted softly. “And smart. Huh.”  
  
He got in the car and at Minako’s demanding eyebrow, explained exactly what happened. She agreed; that was one lucky bird.  
  
Until it got to the Katsuki’s.  
  
“Let’s eat it,” Mari suggested, tapping ash out into the thin dusting of snow now quietly building.  
  
“We‘re not eating the swan,” Yuuri defended, cradling it to his chest and trying to hide it in his scarf. It honked in displeasure and made a fluttering motion with its wings, one rising and knocking into Yuuri‘s face, sending his glasses flying.  
  
“What if we get snowed in here, huh, then we‘re eating it,” Mari teased maliciously, delighting in her brother‘s squinty-faced anger.  
  
“Dad!” Yuuri cried. “Mari‘s smoking on the porch!”  
  
“Yuuri,” Mari hissed.  
  
“Mari, I better not find any butts out there!” their dad hollered out the window.  
  
“You’re such a baby,” Mari snipped, stomping off the porch to smoke away from the onsen. Yuuri stuck his tongue out. He regretted chasing her away before she could hand him his glasses. He almost dropped the increasingly agitated swan trying to pick them off the ground, having to juggle it from arm to arm to bespecle himself once more.  
  
“Is that dinner?” his dad asked upon seeing the swan.  
  
“No! Why is everyone trying to eat this bird?” Yuuri wailed, fed up. “It washed up on the beach, okay?”  
  
“Oh the poor thing. I bet he was someone’s pet or such and got blown away by that awful storm.” His mother swept in with all the love and concern Yuuri expected. “Go to the bathhouse and make it a warm bucket of water to clean up with. Find out what they eat too.”  
  
“Pork katsudon,” Yuuri said hopefully. His mother smiled wider.  
  
“We don’t have the ingredients,” she informed cheerfully. Yuuri sighed but he knew what was in the fridge too. Now he just hoped he could make it through the bathhouse without any hungry guests kidnapping this bird.  
  
\--  
Yuuri stripped off in the bathhouse and sat on a stool, a warm bucket of water sloshing as he inched it a little closer. The bird was tightly curled once more, head staunchly tucked into its feathers.  
  
“Hey, now, let me look at you,” Yuuri murmured soothingly. He had an old rag, sorry bird, and some dish soap. He knows people use it when birds get stuck in oil spills, and while he didn’t think that had happened, it would work just as well. Yuuri hummed and stretched his fingers gently at the swan’s head, trying to coax it out of hiding. When that failed, he bit his lip and risked his very life. “I’m going to touch your wings, okay?”  
  
Then: he died.  
  
  
  
  
No, he didn’t. He thought he would have, hand shaking and one eye shut in fear, but he carefully pried the wing away from the body, stretching it out with his hand. It was so much bigger than he expected, as long as his arm. Maybe there was oil on the swan…Seeing his chance, Yuuri got to work gingerly, washing the wing from the inside crook to the long stiff plumage that brushed the stone floor. He knew birds preened and distributed oils through their plumes, so he just had to get the worst of it off.  
  
It took a long time because Yuuri, even though the swan didn’t make any noise or motions at him, worked carefully. Bending over from the stool put a hot burn in his back after so long, but he cleaned as much as he could of the swan, even picking it up and wiping at its underside. Its stillness alarmed him, so he cooed at it, narrating each of his motions and even drawing wild speculations and questions about its origins, its fortune, wishes for its well-being. He found himself after a time simply stroking its wet feathers, the bird in his lap. From the glass windows, he watched snow fall, gather on the rocks but vanish into the spring.  
  
“You can stay here, until the spring. Or forever. Up to you, swan.” It wouldn’t be a fuss. They’d get it through the last leg of winter and maybe the early storms, but it could come and go as it liked. It was a bird, after all.  
  
“The Katsuki family is very respectable,” he joked. To a swan. God, if his sister could hear him. Or Phichit! That’d end up on the internet in a heartbeat.  
  
Apparently too the swan judged him because finally it stirred, lifting its head and pressing its dark face suddenly to Yuuri. He squawked in remarkable imitation of a previous sound the bird had made. It threw its head back and made a staccato hissing noise, freakish barbed tongue protruding. Yuuri screamed and flailed. The bird flapped its wings and honked, hoping and flopping into the bucket of water with a splash. It barely fit but made a go of it anywhere, flapping water onto its back and dunking its head. It was theatrical and messy, water spilling freely, but the black face, dunked again and again, rooted against the breast feathers and back feathers, slowly lost some of the dirtiness.  
  
“Huh.”  
  
The bill of the swan was…shiny. It looked polished and…golden. The bill was gold. Or it at least had been painted that way. It definitely wasn’t natural. Definitely a pet. Some weirdo owner probably lacquered the bill or something. Jeeze, the shit people did to animals.  
  
Seeing as the bird was now contentedly floating in the bucket, Yuuri abandoned it briefly to wash the dirt off himself and cleaned up the room. He dried off and put on his clothes and finally chased the bird out of the bathhouse and into the main of his family’s inn.  
  
Yuuri quickly explained his speculation on the bird’s bill and his thoughts that, assuming the bird didn’t cause mayhem that it should stay in their care. No one objected, though there were worries about it pooping all over the place. Birds poop a lot.  
  
“Keep it in your room,” Mari suggested.  
  
“Make it a diaper,” his mom advised.  
  
“How about the storage room, with the boxes? Just put down paper, get it a bucket of water. Maybe it’s house trained, who knows these days,” his dad said. That was surprisingly a good idea. So Yuuri did.  
  
He got honked at and chased when he tried to leave the bird there.  
  
“Please, stop, I left you seaweed, I’m sorry,” Yuuri yelled, dashing down the hall, the swan at his heels. “Don’t maim me, I’m a dancer! I have a wife and kids! Okay, I don‘t, but I love my family, please!”  
  
It didn’t maim or murder him. But it did follow him into his room, feet slapping on the wooden floor. Yuuri hid on his bed, heart racing. He could hear Mari cackling in the distance on the phone with someone. Probably Minako. Once the chaos of the moment passed and the swan waddled about the room, investigating, Yuuri settled enough to take a photo and send it to Phichit.  
  
‘I adopted a swan’  
  
‘THAT IS SO COOL WTF’  
  
It slept on his computer chair and didn’t poop everywhere. But the swan also didn’t eat anything, to everyone’s concern, but the bird didn’t seem worse for it. Yuuri tried letting it outside to no success.  
  
“I don’t think it has a butthole,” Yuuri conspired to Mari one night as they sat drinking and playing Jenga. “I’m worried.”  
  
“Maybe it’s a god,” she shrugged. She pretended to dislike the swan, accusing it of always being underfoot and being creepy, but Yuuri saw her scratch its head in passing on more than one occasion.  
  
The swan, sitting beside Yuuri, honked softly and pecked its bill at the Jenga tower, knocking it down.  
  
“Or an asshole,” she amended. “One big asshole.”  
  
The weather had warmed, and what snow there was melted under the bright sunny days that followed. With it came a bloom of guests at Yu-Topia. Yuuri ran around with the rest of his family when he was home, and biked to Minako’s studio for the afternoon ballet classes. He didn’t have any real students at the skating rink, although he was supposed to lead a class this weekend to move on from waltz jumps to a basic salchow. Yuuko and Yuuri had been working on a sort of extended step-by-step open lessons to increase skater competency. Sure, people liked going round and round, but if they could do jumps and skate more efficiently, they came back more and more. Double win!  
  
Yuuri guessed it was joy at the storm having passed that brought a bloom of energy to Hasetsu. It seemed like the inn was busier now than it had been in previous years this week alone. He’d worked on digitalizing their records in his spare time and the numbers suggested his sensation was in fact accurate. Three new students signed up for Minako’s class, one of excellent potential. Yuuri landed a triple toe loop when he was playing around with Yuuko. And the swan became his companion, nestled in the basket in front of his bike when he went to work. It was properly clean these days, nearly glowing white and pristine. Its gilded bill caught sunlight and flared blindingly. It was beautiful, and Yuuri felt blessed in its strange presence. There were moments of the week that Yuuri felt carefree, enchanted and almost magical Everyone was busy, a little frazzled, but smiling. The air was clear, bright with a refreshing cold.  
  
But with so many things, a simple embrace of good fortune did not heal all. The popularity of the inn, the addition of students, and the weekend jump lesson wore Yuuri out. Not simply physically, he had the endurance to go go go with his body, but he himself had hit the wall. His responses lagged, his lessons became mechanical. He shrugged off Yuuko and barely managed to entertain the triplets’ antics on the ice.  
  
He hit his bed at the end of the week and couldn’t rise and couldn’t sleep. The week was great, everyone was in good spirits, the world moved on and on and Yuuri felt cored and empty. What if this is as good as it gets; his parents are radiant with joy, proud of what they’d built. Mari even had a date with some man who’d visited. Minako had praised Yuuri but her passing remark that, if only he’d gone on to do ballet professionally, or skate, what a wonder he would have been -- Yuuri felt wasted. He’d wasted his youth. He’d quivered and cried at the final shove from junior to senior competitions and withdrew. Too much money. He would have had to leave home. How could he have done that, left everyone, convinced himself he could dance for a living -- he hadn’t. He hadn’t. He’d gone to the nearest college, gotten the safe business degree, and learned his mother’s recipes. He’d nailed himself here to Hasetsu, contented himself with teaching little kids, to only playing at the dreams that had danced in and out of his childish mind.  
  
  
I should die. Right now. I should just die.  
  
He didn’t mean it, much, but it was comforting and terrifying at once to think. He’s going to be doing this for the rest of his life?  
  
Yuuri lay in bed, face down and smothered on his own wet choked breathing, feeling his heart race for hours, it felt like. He wouldn’t sleep. He knew it. Tomorrow would be a dazed hell. He pushed up and found his glasses, blinking around his dark room. His childhood bedroom. He should get an apartment…but what’s the point when he helps his parents so much? It was better to keep saving money.  
  
The swan’s luminous presence was not to be seen. Yuuri’s door was ajar, so he guessed it’d waddled off. Shit. He tiptoed through his home and inn but saw no familiar feather. What if someone stole it? It couldn’t have run off. Did someone let the swan outside? Shit. Shit. It’s too cold at night.  
  
Yuuri put on coat and shoes, hopping from foot to foot before he rushed outside, breath puffing in clouds before his face.  
  
Maybe it was he who left the swan out. He hadn’t closed his door, and it had gotten out. It didn’t matter how. But it wasn’t anywhere in the house or the inn, it wasn’t around the hot springs; it wasn’t in the little stone pond with the koi out front. It had no name to call, no tag, just a golden bill that would probably get its head cut off by someone wicked.  
  
Yuuri started walking. He went to the studio. He went to the grocery store. The Post office. Anywhere he’d taken the swan on one of his errands. They were smart creatures. Maybe it flew off. Maybe it was gone. How fitting. Of course. He crossed the bridge. He searched around Ice Castle. And there he paused. Moonlight laid herself across the glass doors of the entrance; there was no logical reason to go inside, but still, Yuuri felt compelled. It was that simple. A stone of certainty settled in his stomach, its round solid shape dense, crunched by the nerves of his stomach. Go inside. His heart growled. He did.  
  
The dead center of night. The door closed snugly behind Yuuri, sealing him in Ice Castle, ghostly still. The dark behind the front counter looked darker. His damp sneakers eeked on the floor. He crept, trying to hold his breath, unable to. He couldn’t name the hush in his body, but a hot terror soaked through him, delivering the sensation of having wet his pants. He trailed his hand along the wall, following a tendril of knowing. Something. Something. He recalled now the same unease following a horror movie seen with friends as a teenager, every shadowed renewed with teeth and grasping hands. Hadn’t he wanted to die?  
  
But the swan, that’s why he was here; and where was here? A skating rink, of all unlikely places for a swan, even as peculiar a swan as he’d acquired through whimsical happenstance.  
  
When he turned finally to behold the rink, Yuuri expected a cult worship, murderers, Yuuko and Takeshi having weird kinky sex on the ice on a blow up mattress -- that oddly specific detail is entirely Yuuko’s fault -- instead, he got a naked man.  
  
At least, he thought it was a man. The glowing figure beneath the moonlight might not be a man, might not be man at all. It was radiant. Arms outstretched, long hair flowing wildly, the figure floated rather than skated. Yes there! A bare leg, muscle in high relief, skin like pearl, rainbow in the light, revealed an arched naked foot.  
  
Yuuri gasped. Feathers sprung from the heel. On the wrists, over slender fingers, bloomed more. As the skater spun, a whip of motion, body singing with the lightness of itself, Yuuri amended his thoughts. Surely this was a god. He couldn’t hold back his inhale, gasping then for air.  
  
The freezing of the figure was like music leaving the world. It wrapped its arms around itself and shied visibly, as if now aware of its nudity. While it was cleanly outlined by the moonlight flooding the rink -- only now did Yuuri realize someone had activated the roof covers -- Yuuri couldn’t see the face or the body in any detail. But it was naked, it was feathered, it was on the ice moving without skates. It was magic. A mirage, an illusion. Yuuri had been enchanted.  
  
“I’m dreaming,” Yuuri whispered and rubbed at his eyes, knocking his glasses off in his haste. They clattered to the floor, bouncing and sounding like a box of glass breaking in the deafening silence of the rink. Yuuri dove for them, shoving them on his face and looking at the rink, heart in his throat.  
  
It was empty.  
  
He clutched the wall, a cry leaving his lips. No. No. Come back. But the ice was white with no one.  
  



	2. Mari

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yuuri and mari use the word 'crazy' in place of more accurate and respectable terms for mental illnesses.

Yuuri ends up back outside without real knowledge of how, but he accepts the direction his feet lead him and keeps walking. There’s no one around. The houses are pitch, but the streetlights and the moon baring down on him suspend the world. The scant remains of snow left on the ground crunch wetly.  
  
Maybe he did die. Maybe that was an angel? Maybe he’s dead right now wandering and lonely…oh god, his ghost is stuck in Hasetsu.  
  
Do they have cell service in the afterlife?  
  
“Yuuri, where are you?” Mari whisper-shrieks into the phone.  
  
“U-uhm,” Yuuri looks around himself. In the dark, everything’s crooked and alien. He can’t recognize the buildings and is forced to run to the end of the sidewalk to find the street sign.  
  
Mari, meanwhile, goes off in his ear: “I woke up to pee and your door was opened and you weren’t in bed and you weren’t anywhere in the house; do you have any idea what time it is; you are so lucky it’s me and not mom she’d have a heart attack; where are you; its freezing out it’s three a.m. Yuuri. Are you okay?”  
  
It’s that late? And god, now he realizes how cold he is, aching with it; he’s not dead; he’s shivering. He hadn’t thought to put on gloves either when he’d rushed out and why hadn’t he taken his bike. He feels like he’s been sleep walking.  
  
“I’m coming to get you. Don’t move,” Mari decides, ending the call with a curse. A surge of shivers make cold sharp and bone deep run through Yuuri. He stumbles to the bench and curls up, knees tucked to his chest. His back hurts. He squeezes his eyes shut, chest tight. He’s dying. He hugs his knees. What did he see? It’s gone. He wishes he were dreaming and could disappear into it. So beautiful; he wants to see that beauty all the time.  
  
He doesn’t hear the car stop in front of him, or the door open and close, but Mari shakes him gently.  
  
“Yuuri. Bro, don’t scare me like that, huh, hey, Yuuri,” she says gently, easing him up, tense lines around her eyes and mouth making her look old.  
  
“You shouldn’t smoke,” Yuuri croaks, huffing on tears he didn’t know came but are here nonetheless. The cigarette smell in her jacket envelops him when she hugs him close, chin on his shoulder.  
  
“And you shouldn’t vanish into the night,” she scolds, squeezing him harder before letting him go and shoving him to the car door. “Now get in. What the fuck, Yuuri?”  
  
He tucks his hands under his thighs, trying to bring warmth back to them. It’s not like he would have died, he wants to say. He had his phone. He’s a grown man. But Mari looks across the seat at him like he’s a wayward child, running from home. He sniffs and clears his throat, slumping. He can’t recognize Hasetsu at this hour. The buildings pass, a foreign town, someone else’s town. He lets his head thump and roll against the window. He’s farther from home than he thought.  
  
“At the rink,” Yuuri starts. He hears Mari take a breath like she’s going to say something but she quiets herself, “I think I saw a god. Or hallucinated.” He tightens his arms around himself, bones quivering. “Someone was on the ice, totally naked, they were glowing and had feathers.”  
  
“Why were you there,” she asks, withholding any judgment of Yuuri’s tale.  
  
“The swan” Yuuri jolts up, panicked. “The swan wasn’t in the inn. Mari, it’s still out--!”  
  
“Yuuri!” Mari hits the breaks and shrieks, throwing her arm across Yuuri’s chest to hold him back, but they both lurch in their seats, the seatbelts snapping taught against their chests. Their necks jerk forward and back but nothing else.  
  
Lit by the car’s headlights, the swan flaps its wings and settles in the middle of the road. Both of the Katsuki children are gripping the seats and steering wheel, breaths running out of their mouths.  
  
“Fuck!” Mari slams her hands against the wheel and honks at the bird. It rustles and flaps its wings, honks back. “That’s it.”  
  
“Wait!” Yuuri screams, grabbing her. “I think it’s a p-person!”  
  
“What?”  
  
Yuuri looks at her, looks at the swan in the middle of the road, and falls back into his seat, hands over his face. His glasses dig into the bridge of his nose, but it’s better than seeing his sister’s face. “I’m crazy. Ignore me.”  
  
“I believe you. Because that swan,” Mari says decisively, “is weird.” And then she slams out of the car, lighting a cigarette menacingly and squaring off with the swan.  
  
“Mari!” Yuuri shouts, following after her, tripping on the seat belt but managing to prevent any avian murder.  
  
“Hey, swan, the hell is your problem? Are you trying to cause a car accident?”  
  
It’s three something in the morning and his sister is lecturing a swan. Yuuri crouches down, hands over his head, eyes wide with disbelief. He’s going crazy. He’s dreaming. He really thinks he’s dreaming.  
  
“And what’s with dragging Yuuri out after your feathered butt? He’s sensitive, you know. Are you a god? Act like one. Now get in the car or fly off. Yuuri, back in the car.”  
  
From his peripheral, because Yuuri dares not look away from the pensive face of the swan, Yuuri sees his sister drop the mostly unsmoked cigarette and grind it into the road before turning back to the car. She opens the door to the backseat and waits. Yuuri’s heart rings in his ear. The swan ducks its head, looking cowed, and tilts its face to peer beadily at Yuuri who holds his breath. The bird puffs up and toots mournfully, apologetically, and waddles to the open car door and jumps in. Mari slams the door shut; Yuuri hears an undignified honk from the insult.  
  
“Yuuri.”  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers, getting to shaky feet. They get in the car and drive home, a pop song playing.

* * *

  
  
Nothing with the swan happens in the weeks that follow. By that, Yuuri means, the swan didn’t turn into a god on him. It didn’t start talking. Yuuri had no strange prophetic dreams. Mari wasn’t inclined to pet the creature, but his parents remained charmed. The bird did gain the habit of following Yuuri absolutely everywhere, appearing in rooms before the thought to enter them struck Yuuri.  
  
Though nothing great came from that night at the rink, it leaves Yuuri unbalanced and lost. He yearns for that figure, the heart-race lightness watching it skate and dance had brought him. One night, after a week had passed without divine intervention, Yuuri cries, a whining cracking noise in the night. The swan flaps up to the bed and curls on his chest that quivered with emotion. It’s comforting but aside from revealing an empathetic talent in the bird, is not the action of a god, in Yuuri’s mind.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he whispers to the swan, gently stroking the back of his knuckles over its feathers.  
  
The days continue the same as before, relentlessly prosperous. No one has down time, and that becomes Yuuri’s great blessing. But unlike before, with this revelation, he sleeps less and less, tossing and turning in bed.  
  
He finds Mari before sleep, ha, before hours of non-sleep, in her room. His sister still has boy bands and pop stars lining her bedroom in shiny posters, in cut-outs from magazines; she’d taken great care in cutting their bodies and faces from the pages, scissors leaving no white behind, her idols collected in collages, mounted on boards. She hasn’t moved out either, Yuuri realizes dumbly. They’re both here. He can’t quite call the feeling relief.  
  
Yuuri knocks on the open door frame of her room. “Mari?”  
  
She’s on her laptop, sprawled in bed. There’s a beer on the nightstand, fuzzy socks on her feet. She taps on the computer, takes out an earbud he hadn’t noticed. “Hmm?”  
  
Yuuri fidgets in the doorway before easing into the room like he might disturb the air. “Can I ask you something?”  
  
“Dunno; can you?” she teases in a worn-out sister way, habitual. Yuuri huffs, rolls his eyes; some of the weight leaves his bones.  
  
“Do you think I’m crazy? About the swan and everything?”  
  
She takes out the other earbud and spins the thin wire like a lasso, lets it wrap around her pointed finger and unwind; does it again. “Who cares?”  
  
“Uhm….I do?”  
  
“Nah.”  
  
“Mari, p-please. I don’t…I swear I saw what I said I saw but…” he isn’t sure. That’s the worst part. He barely remembers as much as he viscerally remembers. He remembers his heart stopping; he remembers the figure, slender, beautiful; feathers sprouting from human limbs, the moon falling like rain and light and someone glowing out there on the ice. But he doesn’t remember getting out of the rink or ending up so far from his house. Thinking back made him dizzy and sick, made him want to find that place all over again.  
  
“Either you did or didn’t. Something will come of it or nothing will. If you’re crazy, you’ll probably get crazier. We’ll put you on some more pills and hope for the best,” she says mercilessly. She’s thought about it. She shrugs. She won’t look at him, staring firmly at her laptop.  
  
Yuuri swallows, sick to his stomach. Mari dealt with the worst of him. Sure, mom and dad took him to the doctor, paid for his anti-anxiety medication. They know at a basic level that Yuuri struggles, that he needs medicated aid to keep doing what he needs to do, to not freeze solid, to not paralyze over crossing the street because he forgets how to do it the right way and something will go wrong if he does it the wrong way; before, when he still danced competitively and would throw up before and after his performances. They knew. But Mari had been the one driving him to and from practice half the time, had walked him into the buildings. He’d been the first to see her smoke, outside the ballet studio, glaring at everyone who looked at her cross-wise.  
  
She wants the swan to be a god too, if only to mean that Yuuri hadn’t wandered out into the night at three a.m. miles from his house, imagining things. She doesn’t want the swan to be a god because she wants to be special but because she wants her brother to be a little less crazy.  
  
All this time, Yuuri has been praying that now the day would come when they would be blessed, that his world would open up, that magic would be upon them. And Mari, with her little girl bedroom and little brother, wants to not have to take him to another round of therapy.  
  
“Right,” Yuuri nods. He returns to his room; the swans on his pillow. It still doesn’t eat and still doesn’t poop. They accept this. They only think about it so far.  
  
Yuuri kneels in front of his bed, touching the pristine white breast feathers, his fingers dipping between them, so soft and light that he can’t feel, like falling into a warm fog. The bird stirs, lifts its slender neck, black eyes and gold bill peered down at the human beneath it.  
  
“Please, be a god,” Yuuri prays. He can’t look at the bird. He slides both hands around its breast, tucking up beneath the pit of its wings where it’s very hot, a quick heartbeat under his fingers. “Be something.”  
  
It toots and flaps its wings, lifting off and resettling on Yuuri’s head, the small talons tipping its webbed feet pins in Yuuri’s hair. He bows his head to his pillow under the weight, sighing. He’ll take it as a sign.

* * *

  
He wakes up, sweat soaked and heart slamming its way up his throat. Yuuri opens bright eyes to the dark room, very awake, very alarmed. He throws the covers off and takes off his shirt, sighing in relief at cool air on his skin. He rubs his skin, prickling now with goosebumps, and the silence of the night descends.  
  
The swan’s gone: his door ajar.  
  
This time, he takes his bike. He debates waking Mari, but he’d rather come to terms with being crazy on his own rather than wake his sister. But he feels it again, an impetus carrying him through the night. It’s cold and still, the street lamps round bubbles of light he zips through, bent over his bike like a racer.  
  
He can’t be dreaming the door of Ice Castle unlocked. He could be dreaming the sound of crashing waves and the high pitched chortle of the swan, the hum beat of wide wings stirring whirls of wind, the sound of storm. Yuuri buckles in his run down the hall, clamping his hands over his ears and taking many claming breaths that at their frantic pace make him more light headed. He keeps running, skidding around the corner and slamming into the low wall of the rink, almost falling over onto the ice.  
  
The moons pouring down once more, vibrant and rushing. It floods. A dark sliver shakes in the middle of all that glorious moonlight, quivering like the string of an instrument, swimming. The sound of waves. Dancing and leaping, lifting and spinning, skating above the ice is the figure. It too seems to hum, the limbs a million, slowed and phasing. The hair is long, it is short. The body slender, the body thick. It grows taller, wider, sturdier, firming up before Yuuri’s believing eyes. His hands drop from his ears; they hadn’t done any good anyway.  
  
The figure looks like a man, spinning his way. A flurry of ice comes from feet that bare no feathers as the figure leaps through quad spins over and over again without regard for physics or the impossibility of body. Arms reach out to Yuuri, slender fingers diving into shadow and light and shadow and shadow and shadow. The face, and what a handsome face, it looks stricken. A cloud dampens out the moon; the light softens, goes gray. The noise in Yuuri’s head dies.  
  
The figure falls, no longer born above the ice, no longer weightless and impossible. Bare feet touch the ice and the body slips and falls, forward onto hands and knees, a loud clamp of palms catching and burning on the ice.  
  
“Ah!” the figure cries, sitting back and yelping as warm skin is covered in cold. “Cold! Yuuri, help! Yuuri! It's cold!”  
  
Yuuri gapes but then he’s pushing open the door to the rink and latching it, slipping out slowly on his sneakers. What the _fuck_?  
  
The figure rests on his knees and toes, arms wrapped around their body, teeth chattering now comically. They’re crying or at least being very noisy with their whining. Yuuri takes off his coat when he finally reaches them and drapes it around their shoulders and eases them to their feet with a determined motion, much as he would a fallen student.  
  
“Are you a god?” he blurts, at a loss, dumbstruck.  
  
“I’m Victor,” the figure says with some cheer, pointing to themselves as if Yuuri needs help identifying _Victor_. They are very naked and very lovely and Yuuri forces the coat on them, guiding their hands through the sleeves and zipping it up around a lean muscled torso. “I’m a Charm of Good Fortune.”  
  
“That’s nice,” Yuuri nods, taking their hand in his and wincing at the sight of bare feet on ice. “Let’s get you warm.”  
  
Because this is a naked person and really, there’s time for figuring out what is going on after Yuuri has reduced the chance of frost bite. So they toddle off the ice, Victor clinging to Yuuri and mumbling in another language -- is it the language of gods?-- all the while.  
  
“Yuuri!” Victor cries once they’re off the ice. They hug Yuuri from behind, long arms circling him and pinning his arms down at his side. A cheek rubs his own. “I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused. You have no idea what I’ve been through.”  
  
“O-okay,” Yuuri stutters, face hot, expression twisted between alarm and a grimace that is supposed to be comforting. “I’m…hallucinating. Very badly. I need to call my sister.”  
  
“Mari?” Victor squawks, grabbing Yuuri and shaking him. “She doesn’t like me.”  
  
“Uh, yeah….no…uhm. Please let me go? And h-here.” Yuuri elbows his way free and takes off his hat and scarf, his shoes and socks. In doing so, he comes face to face with Victor’s naked legs and crotch. _Well! Indeed!_  
  
“UH, uhm, uh,” Yuuri looks down, unlacing his sneakers and kicking them off, going for his socks. He kneels down and lifts Victor’s cold foot, pushing the god or Charm or whatever onto the bench behind him and working the sock onto his foot with single-minded frantic determination. “You need clothes. It’s cold. And you’re naked.”  
  
Victor hums thoughtfully, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Thank you. It’s always a pain going through this phase. It’s been years since I was a man.” He sighs wistfully, chin in hand, letting Yuuri dress him.  
  
“I am in so much trouble,” Victor adds quietly, to himself, but Yuuri hears it anyway with burning ears. Something tells him that, if he isn’t hallucinating a naked man, that he will soon be acquainted with this trouble.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 17 pages in and we finally get naked victor.


	3. Good Fortune

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't stop myself from updating so soon after the previous chapter even though I know I should space out updates but I can't...im too excited. This is so fun to write and I'm so touched by the feedback. It means a lot !!!

The phone rings in Yuuri’s hand, a chirping annoying beep; **MARI** … **MARI** … **MARI** …It’s a dispatch call to reality.  
  
When his sister answers the video call, the first thing she does in groan and put the phone face down on her bed. Yuuri‘s faced with a black screen and a muffled: “Too bright.”  
  
“Mari,” Yuuri begs apologetically.  
  
“Fuck,” Yuuri hears from his sister and there’s noises before the phone is flipped back, his sister roughly illuminated, her miserable sleep face marked by concern. “Where are you?” she demands immediately.  It’s just after three a.m.  
  
With shaking arms, Yuuri draws his phone away from his face, opening the screen to capture Victor wedged close to his side, smiling and waving.  
  
Mari squints. “Where’d you get the white guy?”  
  
Victor laughs, putting a hand to his cheek and resting his head on Yuuri’s shoulder. Yuuri grits his teeth, breathing sharply as his face fills with heat. Victor still doesn’t have any pants on and Yuuri can see the pink of his genitals beneath silver pubic hair.  
  
“This is Victor. The Swan.”  
  
“Charm of Good Fortune, Yuuri,” Victor corrects with a firm pout, poking his cheek. “I’m not a swan right now.”  
  
Yuuri bats him away, trying to stay focused. “So if you can see him, I’m not hallucinating. That’s…reassuring.”  
  
“He’s real,” Mari affirms, rising from bed and throwing on her bedroom light. She groans again, closing her eyes. “But now you’re, what, at Ice Castle with some strange man? Please don’t get murdered before I get there.”  
  
“I’d never!” Victor gasps, hands fanned over his mouth dramatically.  
  
“I’ll manage, I think,” Yuuri offers. “Can-can you just hurry, Mari? Please?” he tacks on quietly.  
  
“On my way, Yuuri.”  
  
They end the call. Victor takes Yuuri’s phone from him deftly. He holds it out of reach.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Why would I not be real, Yuuri?” Victor asks him solemnly, all the sparkle of his previous smile gone, replaced by focused interest.

The proximity of their faces reveals the unexpected in Victor’s: he isn’t flawless. He has lines around his eyes and mouth, he has the pinprick shadow of facial hair that will surely be rough come morning. The cupid bow of his lips is violent, a delicious bright pink that plunges in the center, unpleasant on its own but palatable when mixed with the rest of his features. His eyes are monstrously blue, the very outer edge of the iris starkly navy against the icy interior. He looks nothing like the black-eyed swan, and nothing like the figure Yuuri first saw that had been glowing, androgynous and ethereal. This is distinctly a man, one of the loveliest looking men Yuuri’s seen in person, but not a god.  
  
“S-s-s-s-swan,” Yuuri stutters, recoiling from the closeness, putting his hands out to hold Victor back from scooting across the bench after him. “You were a swan, no? Now you are a man. I thought I was imagining you, okay? You can‘t blame me for that.”  
  
Victor’s head tilts to the side, face pulling into a narrower discerning look before he drops his head, and puts a long-fingered hand over his eyes, seemingly lost in troubled thoughts. Yuuri discretely checks for feathers, inching closer against logic. He’d put distance between them but he hated it. The thick dark hair on Victor’s thighs is sprung up from the cold; he has crossed his legs tightly over each other, shivering. Yuuri sees his own hand reach out and rest warmly on Victor’s thigh.  
  
Victor lifts his face, looks down at his legs, at the hand on them.  
  
“Ah!” Yuuri squeaks, withdrawing his touch, yanking his hands to his chest. “I’m sorry. So sorry!” He claps his hands together apologetically and shoots to his bare feet, yanking down his sweatpants. “Let me --”  
  
Victor’s staring, a finger pressed to his lips contemplatively, mirth filling his eyes.  
  
“Let me give you my sweatpants!” Yuuri practically screams, heart racing, face now numb. He’s red and drunken with nerves, but he kicks off his joggers and thrusts them forward, eyes squeezed shut. “Please, put these on.”  
  
“What’s on your underwear?” Victor asks, taking the offered sweatpants but leaning forward and pinching the loose leg of Yuuri’s sleeping boxers. Yuuri doesn’t have to look down to know what Victor is inspecting. He can’t look. He’ll keep his eyes closed forever and never deal with any of his dumpster fire life.  
  
“Gudetama. He’s an…egg….”  
  
“So cute!” Victor praises, tugging on Yuuri’s boxer leg, dragging the well worn elastic down Yuuri’s hips. Yuuri’s eyes spring open, and he smacks Victor’s hand away, stumbling back a step. Victor blinks, offended and offensive hand poised in the air. Yuuri stares. Victor stares. Then Victor throws his head back laughing. “So cute!”  
  
“Please put on pants,” Yuuri begs, hugging his arms around himself and staring down at his toes. He still has his warm sweatshirt on but now his legs are cold. But as Victor stands up, legs going on forever -- Yuuri looks away, biting the inside of his cheek painfully -- and steps into Yuuri’s sweatpants, Yuuri can’t help but feel relieved.

He sneaks his eyes back to Victor; the elastic of the cuff is halfway up Victor’s calf, but the waist fits him, though he does knot the drawstrings. Yuuri deflates, hand over his chest. Good. He wouldn’t know what to say if Mari showed up and found Yuuri with a strange naked man. Ah, but the fault with sweatpants, especially too small ones, is that Yuuri can see where Victor’s penis rests, the shape of the head clearly visible.  
  
Penises…Yuuri’s arch nemesis…. He looks away, staring intently at a speck on the floor. It looks like a penis.  
  
A cool finger touches Yuuri‘s chin, making him jolt. He was expecting a penis.  
  
“Now that you’re more comfortable,” Victor purrs, bringing Yuuri’s face up to his, tilting Yuuri’s head back gently so Victor can beam down at him, all slow blinks, gleaming eyes. “Perhaps I can convince you of how real I am, yes?”  
  
_With your penis_ , Yuuri thinks wildly.  
  
When Yuuri says nothing, staring stupidly, Victor makes the strategic choice to decide for Yuuri. He takes up Yuuri‘s hands in his own, holding them steepled together in prayer.

“Great! Let’s see: The Charm of Good Fortune. What is our situation? You have shoes but no socks and I have your socks but no shoes. It’s a simple fix: if I find shoes and socks, you may have your socks back. It would be very fortunate of us to stumble upon a pair of forgotten socks and shoes in my size, yes?”  
  
Yuuri blinks rapidly, trying to find clarity in the nonsense leaving Victor’s mouth. Victor drops one of Yuuri’s hands but keeps the other in his, tugging.  
  
“So where might we reasonably find these?” Victor questions, squeezing Yuuri’s hand and looking at him earnestly.  
  
“Lost and Found? It’s…,” Yuuri trails off and leads Victor by hand out from the rink and down the hall to the front desk. He doesn’t think Victor will let go of him and makes little effort to find the truth of that. 

“I don’t remember there being anything here last time. Maybe some gloves?” Yuuri guesses, looking at the strange man.

  
Victor swings their hands, totally confident. Yuuri doesn’t have the key to the side door so they have to climb over the desk, into the mock office. Moving his body towards a goal settles him; it seems easier to comprehend what’s going on when he’s focused now on a small thing, like finding a pair of shoes. He uses the light on his phone to find the box roughly labeled Lost and Found tucked on a shelf. Victor lifts it down, one foot kicked out behind him, spinning around on his toes to set the box on the desk.  
  
There’s a pair of wadded up socks and a pair of worn black lace up boots.  
  
“How fortunate,” Victor laughs, taking the items in hand and sitting down on Yuuko’s spinning chair. He tugs off Yuuri’s socks and rolls the ones in his hand onto his feet, unconcerned for the previous owners potential fungal infections.

“Here, Yuuri,” Victor says, tossing the socks at Yuuri. Yuuri sits on the floor, holding them, feeling the warmth saturated in the fabric, watching. Next, Victor puts on the boots, unlacing them and wiggling his feet inside. He stamps them down and kicks them out towards Yuuri proudly.  
  
Yuuri feels for the toes. “They fit,” he whispers to himself. What are the odds…Victor lounges in the chair, legs spread obscenely and face content as he looks down at Yuuri. His expression has an expectant edge and for lack of better, Yuuri pats the toe of the boot. “Good job?”  
  
Victor cocks his head and sits back in the chair, finger to his lip and face once again turning serious. Yuuri accepts the reprieve. He’s putting his sneakers back on when Mari bursts through the front door, calling for him.  
  
“Here!” He yells back, standing up behind the front desk, waving. Victor shoots up from the chair, sending it rolls and clattering into a filing cabinet. Mari swings her phone around, flashlight glaring into their eyes. Both men flinch and cover their faces; the scene feels oddly inappropriate, as if they’ve been caught committing a crime. Technically, it might be classified as breaking and entering.  
  
“Step away from my brother,” Mari threatens. “You dirty stinking bird brained--”  
  
Victor throws his hands up in a bid for peace, inching behind Yuuri.  
  
“Mari. It’s fine. He’s fine. His name is Victor and he’s good luck.”  
  
“Charm of Good Fortune,” Victor corrects again, increasingly exasperated with the human’s inability to remember his proper title. He pokes Yuuri in the side. “Charm. Good Fortune. _Luck_ ,” he spits, “is ridiculous probability and has no will or magic to it. Luck has _nothing_ to do with _anything_ , it’s baseless. I’m a blessing. A charm. You should be so lucky--” he cuts himself off with an irritated growl, followed by a lot of noise in an unknown language. It sounds like swearing and lamenting.  
  
Yuuri laughs weakly and gestures at Victor, deflecting. Mari’s glaring. “Charm of Good Fortune,” Yuuri amends. “Can we go home, please?”  
  
“Why aren’t you wearing pants?”  
  
“Home, please!”  
  
“Yuuri, I’m hungry. I think I’m starving,” Victor whines, pulling on Yuuri’s hand again. “I haven’t eaten in decades.”  
  
“Decades?” Mari stomps forward, baring the light down on them. She hops the desk in a show of coordination Yuuri very rarely sees from his sister and snatches Victor by the front of his coat. Yuuri’s coat. Mari looks the strange man up and down, sees him dressed in Yuuri’s clothes, swings an accusing look at Yuuri, eyes devoid of concern.  
  
“Hey, Yuuri, you haven’t been having wild sex out here have you?”  
  
Yuuri pulls the hood of his sweatshirt up, draws the strings tightly so he’s cocooned, crouches down, and stuffs his head between his legs to count his breaths. “I. Am. Dying,” he wheezes.  
  
“Are you,” Mari presses, nudging her foot at him. All she can hear is Yuuri’s laboured breathing. She turns her attention back to Victor.  
  
“I was a swan,” Victor pleads his alibi.  
  
“An annoying swan,” Mari huffs, releasing him and crossing her arms. “Yuuri, it’s okay. We’ll go home once you calm down. I believe you, about everything. The swan is some kind of god - charm - whatever, you saw him, he’s here, we’re all together figuring it out.”  
  
Yuuri mumbles something incoherent. Victor looks between the Katsuki siblings, lowering his hands. Most of his attention remains on Yuuri but he shoots questioning looks at Mari before silently waving his hands between them, demanding explanation.  
  
“He’s overwhelmed. Yuuri, you don’t have any of your medicine on you, do you?”  
  
“No,” Yuuri croaks. “I’m not having an attack just…,” he shakes with his next breath and lays down entirely on the cool floor. “Let me lay here.”  
  
_To rot._  
  
“Is it okay to talk?” Victor murmurs, crouching down near Yuuri’s head. Mari looms. Yuuri grunts an affirmative. “Hey, Yuuri, let’s talk about me. Would it help if I explained?”  
  
“Yes,” Mari bites, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. Victor winces a smile in her direction.  
  
“Please,” Yuuri says.  
  
And to both Katsukis’ surprise, this Charm of Good Fortune lays down on the laminate floor and stretches out beside Yuuri on his back, arms crossed behind his head. He shows no discomfort or reluctance to do this; there’s a healthy gap between his body and Yuuri’s but the solidarity is clear.  
  
“I don’t have much of a memory about my previous life or, lives, would be more appropriate. I’m reincarnated after each life. Most of my life is spent as a swan; it’s a matter of convenience for the universe. Men are full of whims and their own ideas. It’s such a relief,” Victor chuckles, wiggling happily. “I rarely get to be a person.”  
  
“So how do you know who you are?” Mari questions. Yuuri’s a silent listener, breathing quieted down but he’s holding himself stiff enough to tremble, curled tight on the floor.  
  
“I just do. I was a boy last time I got to be like this. I know life when I’m a person but as a swan, which is my Charm form, it’s a vague impression. Like - like a watery painting.”  
  
“Cool,” Mari dismisses. “What’s this Charm nonsense? Not a god?”  
  
“Not a god,” Victor confirms, making eye contact with her. It’s the first time, and Mari’s caught by his gaze. For all the fluttery movements, the man has a razor gaze. “Gods create, Charms influence. Everything already exists, we, hmm,” he struggles, “apply pressure to circumstances.”  
  
“We? There’s more of you?”  
  
“Oh yeah! I’m not the only Charm, not even the only Charm of Good Fortune. My little brother is the Charm of Good Grace.” Victor smiles and kicks his heels against the floor. “Oh, Yuri is going to be angry when he finds out where I am.”  
  
“I will?” Yuuri whispers.  
  
“My brother Yuri, isn‘t that a coincidence” Victor clarifies, rolling over on his side to peer at Yuuri. Yuuri rolls too and peaks out from his sweatshirt hood; his glasses are smashed against his face and it’s getting a little uncomfortable.  
  
“So why are you here?” Yuuri asks, frowning at Victor. “Is that why you’re in trouble?”  
  
Victor forces a laugh, smiling, but he won’t meet Yuuri’s eyes, letting his own drift listlessly to fix elsewhere. Again, Yuuri sees the wrinkles, the wear in his face. The figure he saw dancing before must have been Victor as a boy. A younger, brighter Victor, not this weary one.

“With Charms, we end up in the right place at the right time. I have a Keeper who makes sure that happens. But ah, I got mad. I was tired of being passed around and of being stuck a swan. I don’t age when I’m that way, but what’s the point of eternity when you don’t get to live, hmm? So…I ran away!”

  
“You ran away? What are you, ten?” Mari accuses. Yuuri, on the other hand, has pushed up onto his elbow and shoved his hood back.  
  
“Wouldn’t you, if you had no life?” Victor challenges, jaw tight and words cold. “I bring Good Fortune until my time in a space and place is done; I go somewhere else, I pass through this world half-minded, half-soul’d. I want more.”  
  
Victor looks ready for both of them to question his decision, to derail him; he looks like it’s a fight he’s had before, a fight he’s tired of having to make.  
  
“I understand,” Yuuri whispers. Victor jerks his attention from Mari to Yuuri, eyes wide. Yuuri‘s eyes are dark, warm in the softness of his face. “It’s okay to want to live for yourself, even if it makes other people angry. That’s life sometimes.”  
  
Victor’s mouth slackens and he looks down at the floor again.  
  
“But why Hasetsu?” Mari asks after the silence has dwelled.  
  
“The storm. Yakov, my Keeper, tried to deter me with it; but instead I got blown here. Then Yuuri saved me,” he grins at Yuuri, back with his shiny plastic smile. “And he turned me into a person again. I didn’t think I’d be able to on my own, it was really….scary,” he finishes chin in hand, pouting.  
  
  
Yuuri did this? “H-how?”  
  
Victor hums. “You prayed for good fortune. And good grace. Yuri might find us now, thanks to that.”  
  
“I did what!?”  
  
“Yes! When you were trying to pick me up the first time. And,” Victor looks at him grimly. “You’ve Charmed me.”  
  
“I did what?” Yuuri wails once more, sitting up.  
  
Victor drums his fingers on the floor, a dull tap-tap-tap rolling over itself. “ _Please be a god. Please be something,_ ” he mimics Yuuri’s vague prayer. “You wanted desperately for me, so….you got me. It’s a whole thing,” Victor waves his hand to demonstrate its grandness, the all encompassing magnitude. He is not an apt educator. “I’ve never been so directly prayed to before, it was amazing. You’re so cute and earnest, Yuuri; How could I resist being Charmed?”  
  
Victor sits up and stretches forward, bending in half to clasp the soles of his feet. “I’ll bring you Good Fortune, Yuuri. All of Hasetsu.“ Victor straightens and twists his torso, continuing to stretch; he’s been cramped up as a bird for who knows how long. With just Mari’s phone light hovering behind them, Victor’s face is lost in shadow save for his eyes which shine with the same glint that his swan bill had, precious metal and an internal radiance that flashes alien and unreal. He winks at Yuuri. “You have my promise.”


	4. Rest up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for the feedback and support. I love every word you send my way. Please enjoy this chapter. I know where I'm going with this story and definitely how it's going to end but it just needs to get into the swing of it which takes time. alas.

Victor’s an idiot child in the back seat of the family car, playing with the electric window, unable to decide if he wants the wind in his hair or not. Mari’s trying not to lose it, her own window down as she smokes; Yuuri hates when she smokes in the car, she’s not supposed to, but he doesn’t feel right calling her out tonight. Instead, he rides twisted around, half out of his seat to watch Victor. He fears that if he looks away, that Victor will vanish; that this breathlessness making him dizzy and giddy will leave him. It’s a hum of excited panic beneath his skin that sits there the whole ride home.  
  
Victor wants to know about Hasetsu and the onsen and the ice rink and all of Yuuri’s and Mari’s favorite places in town. And can they go out to eat, and can they go for a walk, and can they go do karaoke, he wants to try it. He wants to eat ice cream and go shopping and watch movies.  
  
Yuuri says yes to everything. Each promise makes Victor smile wider and wider, suggest more thing he wants to do. Can they go to the beach, can they go to Tokyo, can they vacation in China and walk the Great Wall, can they go diving in Sri Lanka, can they can they can they--  
  
“I’ll try my best,” Yuuri laughs, unable to keep up, unable to pretend that much of that is feasible. Victor slows down, smiles in understanding and pats his thighs to a happy rhythm.  
  
“I want to get to know Hasetsu,” he says, choosing the easiest of his desires to act on. Hasetsu they can do.  With this, Victor finally leaves the window down and rests arm on the open frame, cheek cradled there. The wind’s cold, the air tobacco stained, but Victor’s peaceful even as his nose turns red. Yuuri looks longer than he can explain away before turning back to witness again the familiar alien crawl of Hasetsu’s night streets.

  
  
Slight problem: what now?

 

  
“You have to be quiet, so we don’t wake me parents,” Yuuri whispers outside the front door. Mari snorts and unlocks it.  
  
“I’m going back to bed. Try not to get into trouble before I wake up,” she says, waving goodnight. “Spare bedrolls are in the hall closet, Yuuri.”  
  
_Bedrolls._  
  
Yuuri latches onto his sister, hugging his entire body around her arm and leaning his weight opposite her determined efforts to move forward. “Mari,” he hisses, “you can’t leave me with him.”  
  
“I’m about to,” she replies, not missing a beat. Yuuri gets an elbow in his stomach; Mari disentangles herself and turns on her heel, patting Yuuri’s cheek fondly. There are times to be concerned and play mother hen and times to feed Yuuri to the wolves. “Have fun.”  
  
Victor’s shoeless and wandering his house, creeping through the main room of the inn. He heads straight for the kitchen. Yuuri jogs after him, at a loss. The only way forward is through.  
  
“Please, Yuuri, feed me?” Victor whines, holding his stomach and wilting into a chair. “I’m starved. I’m skin and bones.” He unzips Yuuri’s jacket to show off his muscled body, sucking in his stomach and poking at an exposed rib.  
  
An eyebrow ticks speculatively on Yuuri’s face even as he blushes. _What a flamboyant man_. His parents will be delighted. If Victor pulls these antics in front of his mother, he’ll be eating like a king.  
  
“I’ll make you something super yummy tomorrow, so please be content with sometime simple tonight,” Yuuri placates, rummaging through the refrigerator. He crouches to inspect the contents of the crisper. “Uhm, is there anything you can‘t eat?”  
  
“Ahh,” Victor muses directly into Yuuri’s ear. Yuuri jumps and knocks the back of his head into Victor’s chin. Victor yips in pain.  
  
“S-sorry! You scared me. I’m sorry,” Yuuri apologizes hastily. Victor rubs his red chin but smiles reassuringly, waving Yuuri’s twitching concern away. That didn’t seem like good fortune for either of them.  
  
“I don’t know. I just know that I’m hungry,” Victor answers, fingering his reddened chin thoughtfully.  
  
Yuuri considers this. The swan version of Victor hadn’t ate, and even though Victor looks to be in good health, he also looks bedraggled and tired, dark circles under his eyes and Yuuri isn’t missing how Victor’s leaning on the counter, leaning on the table, taking his seat again gratefully.  
  
“Let’s start simple tonight; it’s late, we don’t want to shock your system. Is rice porridge okay?”  
  
_It better be._  
  
Victor nods, slouching onto the table and cradling his head in his arms, watching Yuuri putter about the kitchen. Yuuri keeps an eye on him while he gets the rice cooking; he catches the exact moment Victor’s eyes slide shut and his back rises and falls with a sigh as he dozes off. It’s then that Yuuri finally lets his arms drop to his side, body gone slack to finally be done with the scrutiny.  
  
He too droops, catching himself on the counter and standing across from the sleeping Charm. The knowledge that he’s gone and gotten himself blessed should have the onsen bursting with joy; he imagines that the swan’s presence had been why they’d been so busy, the sudden influx of patrons, maybe even Minako’s new students, all that could be traced back to Victor’s presence. It sounds biased now to say yes, luck’s on their side -- ah, fortune -- what had Victor said, luck is baseless?-- Luck is out of bounds of influence, true and pure chance. What Victor entails is Fortune, an intentional boon.  
  
So why here? Why Hasetsu? Why Katsuki Yuuri of all people? He’s not special enough, prayers or not, to have warranted this.  
  
His thoughts cloud over and it’s only Victor snorting in his sleep and mumbling that keeps them at bay, his mind brought to the present, to this bizarre new fixture in his reality. With a shake of his head, Yuuri turns away from the sight of Victor’s sleeping face and grabs the tea kettle.  
  
An innocuous amount of time passes, precisely the right amount of time:  
  
“Ah, Victor?”  
  
Yuuri hesitates to touch him. Is it okay to wake a sleeping Charm? What if it reverses the Charm? What if Victor wakes up the merchant of death, or the walls come crumbling down?  
  
“V-victor,” Yuuri whispers, crouched down and staring up Victor’s nose. It twitches. Yuuri’s finger hovers over it and eventually makes contact, scratching the tip lightly. It twitches again and Victor smacks his lips, burying is face into his arms. _Cute_.  
  
Yuuri wraps his arms around his knees and waits. Victor lifts his head, bleary-eyed. There’s dried drool on the side of his face and a wet spot on the sleeve of Yuuri’s jacket. Yuuri bites his lips against a giggle.  
  
“Where am I?” Victor asks, rubbing his eyes.  
  
Yuuri’s stomach sinks. “Hasetsu, Japan. My family’s onsen…”  
  
Victor squints at Yuuri.  
  
“I’m Yuuri,” Yuuri rushes to say, pointing to himself as Victor had on the ice.  
  
“I know who you are.” Victor gives him an unreadable look. “I’d know you anywhere.”  
  
Yuuri presses his hands to his lips and gets to his feet, wordless. He spins around and heads to the heavy pot on the stove to ladle Victor a bowl of porridge. He tucks dried shredded seaweed on the side and serves Victor the steaming bowl, followed by a cup of herbal tea.  
  
“Here. Eat what you can. If you feel okay tomorrow, you can eat something heavier.”  
  
Victor thanks him profusely, stares at his bowl, and proceeds to **Obliterate** it and everything in the pot. He drinks cup after cup of tea and Yuuri stands beside the table, a horrified and captivated bystander, refilling bowl and cups mechanically, devoutly. There’s a few mushy grains of rice at the bottom of the pot but Victor cleans house.  
  
“Thank you. I can’t wait for tomorrow.” Victor rubs his bloated belly appreciatively, face pink with warm food.  
  
Yuuri mimics a smile, terrified. This guy’s gonna eat them out of house and home.  
  
He gives Victor a spare toothbrush and one of the guests robes. Yuuri leads him back to his bedroom, ears burning, shoulders hunched higher and higher with every creak of their feet on the wooden floors.  
  
“I changed my bed sheets, so you can sleep there, if that’s okay. J-just for tonight. Tomorrow we can work on better arrangements.”  
  
He bows out, ready to leave Victor for sleep. But, as Yuuri has come to expect, his shiny new Charm has other ideas. Victor catches Yuuri’s wrist and holds him in a firm grip. Yuuri has little time to consider the thump of his pulse echoing back at him from the weight of Victor’s fingers closed around it as Victor steps into Yuuri’s space, speaking in low tones.  
  
“Where will you sleep if I have you room?”  
  
Yuuri‘s heart stutters in time with his voice. “A-ah, I set up a bedroll--”  
  
“We always sleep together, since I first came here,” Victor talks over Yuuri’s protests, bent on his own idea. A men of whims and fancy. The swan was far easier to manage, Yuuri realizes, too little too late. “Don’t let me displace you from your own bedroom. I can’t have that.”  
  
A warm thumb rubs up and down the inside of Yuuri’s wrist. The stroking touches him elsewhere, running deep through him, a hot current that makes his thighs sweat and a swimming, sideways feelings strikes him low in his gut.  
  
Yuuri jerks out of Victor’s hold, inhaling deeply, chest puffing out in cartoonish courage. This is ridiculous! The effect Victor has on him makes Yuuri feel like his bones are going one way and his blood another.  
  
Victor lets him go with his touch but not with his eyes, arresting Yuuri. When he speaks again, the smoke of his voice is gone.  
  
“Please, Yuuri? I hate being alone,” he pouts puppyishly, wet-eyed.  
  
“F-fine,” Yuuri relents, turning his back to Victor, all of his resolve leaving him in a whoosh of breath. “Head to bed, I’ll be back in a minute.”  
  
Or ten. Or twenty. He hopes Victor’s asleep by the time he creeps into his bedroom. Victor looks asleep, blankets pulled up to his chin. Yuuri unrolls the mat as quietly as he can and slips under the comforter, plugging his phone into the charger cable yanked down from the nightstand. It’s almost five a.m.  
  
“Oh, shit,” Yuuri curses, tapping his phone against his forehead, at a loss. He has to wake up soon. Is it worth it to sleep? Will he be able to sleep? He hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night for weeks. He should just stay up: make really strong coffee. Or matcha tea. They have some somewhere. If he can stay awake and power through his chores, he can beg a ride from Mari to the studio. But he needs to explain to his parents their new houseguest. And Victor wants to go into town…  
  
“Yuuri.”  
  
Yuuri looks up. The light of his phone reflects in glass doll eyes. Victor’s ghostly in a wash of blue.  
  
“You’re tired,” Victor wisely observes. Yuuri stares, transfixed, as a hand fills his vision then slips to his peripheral and vanishes as only a caress across his temple, his cheek, sliding down his throat purposefully, feather soft. His heartbeat wages against the skin separating his blood and Victor‘s. It’s not like before in the hallway. It’s like on the ice. A thrumming moth-wing sound fills up his head.  
  
 “It’d be good for you to sleep.”  
  
His tongue has grown cottony, heavy and mute. Yuuri swallows a choke of words that slips down the back of his mouth, that cools in his stomach. Victor presses on his shoulder, easing his head to his pillow, intoning all the while.  
  
“Close your eyes, Yuuri. Sleep for me.”  
  
He’s warm, as if he’s been under the covers for hours. As if he’s been asleep cozily.  
  
“You haven’t been sleeping much, have you, little one? Let me change that for you. That‘s good, right?”  
  
Fingertips trace over his collarbone, up to run the curl of his ear then across his brows, tickle his eyelashes where they sleep sweetly on his cheeks. The darkness of his closed lids is bottomless.  
  


* * *

  
  
There is a strange man in her son’s bedroom. Hiroko halts in the doorway, damp hands clutched around a dishtowel. When Yuuri had failed to show at the table for breakfast, much out of character for him, she’d gone to fetch him, feeling years younger dragging her little boy to school.  
  
The situation now is a far cry from memories of her baby boy. Yuuri’s tucked into his bed, sound asleep. A foreigner presides over him, pose pensive, warding his bedside like a fixed guardian. But Hiroko has interrupted this contemplative worship: the man regards her, first critically, then with a radiant smile overtaking his face. He lifts his hand in a pleasant wave, a finger to his lips for quiet. He’s wearing a guest robe. He bows when the bedroom door is closed.  
  
“Katsuki Hiroko. I’m Victor, a Charm of Good Fortune. Previously known as the swan in your home.”  
  
For some people, this is all the explanation they need. A person says they are what they are and you accept it. Hiroko has a good feeling. She’s one of those people.  
  
“I thought you were a lucky bird. It’s good we didn’t eat you,” Hiroko says pleasantly, leading Victor down the hall. Someone must eat breakfast, and Yuuri looked so deep in sleep, se couldn’t stand to wake him. “Are you taking care of Yuuri?”  
  
She doesn’t know that the mere word luck is a bite to Victor’s ear, and he doesn’t tell her, instead he bites his own tongue. Luck. People are so careless, so fast-paced; they think only of the indifferent hand of luck; it’s a lack of artistry. Fortunes are made. Luck falls from the sky.  
  
“Yes. I’m sorry for the intrusion but I’m simply stuck on your son. I’m going to turn his fortune around.”  
  
“That’s very nice of you,” she nods along, sitting Victor down where Yuuri usually sits. “This isn’t a matter of debt, now, is it?”  
  
“Debt?” Victor, ---what a handsome young man! -- asks, following her with his eyes as she bustles around the kitchen.  
  
“Yuuri brought you here when you were in a poor way; he’s not the sort of boy to seek repayment. He won’t stand it if you’re blessing him from guilt.”  
  
“Nothing of the sort,” he’s quick to answer, waving it all away with his hand. But he doesn’t explain, and he grows very quiet, contained. “I’m a Charm of Fortune; I don’t believe in debts.”  
  
She laughs. Only young men can say nonsense like that. “Is there a Charm for the Miser? They’ll believe in debt.”  
  
“You’re clever,” he praises, lifting a steaming teacup to his face, words drifting around the rim.  
  
“I run a decent business. Now, eat. Do you know if Yuuri will be asleep long? He has work today.”  
  
“About that…”

* * *

 

  
**Much later that day:** our sleeping beauty rises from his spell. Yuuri has no sense of time, no sense of his body. He becomes aware of his consciousness through the articulation of objects around him; there is his desk chair, there is a pile of laundry, the dampness beneath his cheek is spit, the warmth around him is his blanket. The sole of his foot itches and he scratches it with his other foot.

His clock reads 3:01 p.m.  
  
It means nothing to him.  
  
Then it means too much.  
  
“Shit!”  
  
He sits up, heartbeat rousing in his chest at breakneck speed; his vision evolves into higher form so he can see how badly he’s fucked up. Three in the afternoon? What day is it? How did he get here? He stumbles out of bed, comforter dragged to the floor in his frantic escape.  
  
“Mom?”  
  
How did he--Where was he --wasn’t he--the ice!  
  
“Victor!” Yuuri shouts, turning circles in the hallway blindly, hands fisted in his hair. Was that real? Was Victor -- no. Three p.m. He’s overslept. He’s had wild dreams. There’s no way---how old is he? What year is it? -- God, oh god, he’s definitely over slept for everything ever that’s possible to oversleep for ever in the history of things. A dance recital, a job interview, college?? That‘s come and gone. He’s in trouble with someone somewhere he knows it.  
  
“Mom? Mari? Dad?”  
  
“Yuuri!”  
  
“V-victor?” Yuuri stops moving and squints. Hell, he doesn’t even have his glasses on. Is he wearing pants? He checks. He’s wearing sweatpants. _Okay_. _Cool_.  
  
Victor, still dressed in a guest robe, _not_ wearing pants, is upon him in a blink of an eye,  face wide with concern, tutting his tongue and holding Yuuri’s face in both of his warm hands, muttering to himself.  
  
“You’re real?” Yuuri confirms dazedly. Victor rolls his eyes and pinches Yuuri’s cheek unkindly. He’s certainly awake, no dream here.  
  
“Enough. I am real. I meant to wake you but I was a minute late. Yeesh, you despairing creature. You reek of worry. Not even a minute and you’re full panic. Yuuri, you make me ache. You kill me,” Victor bombards him, full dramatics, fainting all over Yuuri, leaning into him and making them wobble and dance on their bare feet.  
  
“I'm-I’m sorry?” Yuuri apologizes hesitantly, holding Victor by the waist in an attempt to steady them. His gesture is clearly misinterpreted because Victor lets all of his weight into Yuuri’s arms, a sudden gravity to his body. Yuuri grunts and holds him up, warring between confusion and self-conscious terror because Victor’s robe had not been well tied and its falling off his shoulders and Yuuri’s lips are forced to dodge the velvet curl of an earlobe and the silk tickle of silver hair and the hot bare flesh of Victor’s shoulders and back making itself known on his cheek. The roll of narrow hips in his hands is obscene so early in Yuuri’s midday crisis.  
  
“Victor, please,” Yuuri protests, dancing them forward, propping the dangerous and unabashed Charm against the wall to rid himself of the impending calamity of close proximity. “I’m late. It’s so late into the day, I’m the dead one. I should have been at the studio hours ago.”  
  
“It’s okay,” Victor assures, letting Yuuri slips from his embrace. He makes no attempt to cover himself, robe sunk down to his elbows, chest painfully bare and -- Yuuri looks down at his bare feet, at Victor’s bare feet -- nipples stark and jarring. Yuuri loathes him; he loathes his nipples; he loathes his approximate knowledge of the shape of Victor’s penis.  
  
“It’s not,” Yuuri grinds out, hands clenched to fists at his side. “You did something to me last night.”  
  
“I made you sleep,” Victor supplies helpfully. His voice holds no guilt, no criminality. It chides: don’t you get it, Yuuri, you silly boy, you had to sleep.  
  
“But why? And why so late? I have to go to work, I have responsibilities.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have slept if it wasn’t for your own good. Trust me. Minako agreed that you needed to sleep. It‘s all for the best.”  
  
Victor’s forceful nonchalance and dominance both overwhelms and irritates Yuuri. This Charm of a man descends into his world on a wing and a whim and overtakes his life with a snap. Yuuri can’t gather his bearings, body rested but his mind quickly and aptly unstrung.  
  
“But I didn’t agree,” Yuuri argues. He stomps his foot and sucks in a breath; his eyes throb with the want to cry but he can’t place why. He doesn’t want to cry. He wants to go back to bed. He wants -- ah - he wants to be falling asleep again, as he had last night, with Victor’s hand on his cheek, with Victor’s voice telling him to sleep. That dreamy moment had been the most peaceful slips to slumber he can recall.  
  
“Sorry, Yuuri, I’m sorry,” Victor’s saying, a hand on Yuuri’s cheek. “You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”  
  
Yuuri lifts his head, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself grounded, to punish his mouth from any outcry. It's overdone self-flagellation, outdone by Victor filling his vision with his worried and pinched face, the splendid wild heart of his mouth darkly parted. Heat diffuses through Yuuri, from behind his eyes down his cheeks, loosening the angry bolt of his jaw, flushing and easing down his body. His own heartbeat overtakes his focus but it’s slowing, and he settles with it. He closes his eyes.  
  
“Okay,” he says. He comes back to himself. “I’m not in trouble with my boss?”  
  
“You are not.”  
  
“You spoke to her?”  
  
“Yes. Your mother called her.”  
  
“You spoke to my mom?”  
  
“She’s very nice. She fed me. I think I could eat her cooking forever.”  
  
“Okay.”  Yuuri breathes deeply, conscious that Victor isn’t touching him. His hand had left Yuuri’s cheek but he doesn’t know when. “Wait.”  
  
He opens his eyes, face crunched speculatively. “You talked to my _mom_? _You_? Does she know you were a swan? You were- _were a bird?”_  
  
Victor crosses his arms over his chest, once again reminding Yuuri that he needs to get Victor into something a little more decent sooner rather than later. “Of course. I’m not a con man. I was completely honest with your mother. You insult me.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Yuuri drawls, shuffling his way back down the hallway. “Right.”  
  
“Yuuri? Where are you going? Yuuri?”  
  
Yuuri closes his bedroom door and locks it. Will it hold against whatever magic Victor possesses? Yuuri bites his lips and thinks very hard: it’s for the best, my best, if this door remains locked.  
  
It does.


	5. Boyfriends

A series of events followed that made clearer to Yuuri with each passing day that Victor, Charm of Good Fortune, had no clue what the hell he was doing. At all. About nearly anything.  
  
Let’s take a narrative moment to relay the aforementioned events.

* * *

  
  
They go shopping. The same day that Yuuri sleeps for too many splendid hours and resigns himself to the intrusion of Victor in his life, a delightful rapturous tormenting intrusion, they go to the shopping center down town. Yuuri’s prepared to spend money, to stock the Charm up on basic necessities: Underwear, a coat that fits, socks. Victor looks like a forgotten child gone through a growth spurt with Yuuri’s too small clothes on him.  
  
Naturally, Victor finds an abandoned wallet stuffed with cash and no personal identification out in the parking lot He winks at Yuuri as he pockets it.  
  
There’s a surprise sale at the first store they walk into. The clerk thinks Victor’s a dreamboat and throws in another discount, especially since people aren’t buying coats anymore. The money from the wallet buys him a limited but more than passable wardrobe.  
  
“Are you sure that you don’t want anything,” Victor bothers. He grabs the nearest item by the cash register to dangle enticingly before Yuuri. “A key chain?” It’s bright pink and fluffy.  
  
“No,” Yuuri says gently, folding Victor’s hand away with an embarrassed smile.  
  
“Oh,“ Victor frowns. “Can I get it?” Victor shakes the puffball in front of his face, eyes crossing to watch.  
  
“You found the money.”  
  
Victor tears the tag off for the clerk and attaches the keychain to the ring of car and house keys. “Maybe Mari will like it. Tell her I was thinking of her, okay?”  
  
Yuuri does. Mari likes the useless thing. It’s oppressively neon; helps her find her keys, she reasons. Victor’s ability to come out on the bright side has no end. And it’s just the beginning.

  
  
“You’ve traded your swan for a man?” is Yuuko’s response to Victor’s presence on the ice.  
  
“I’m Victor, a Charm of Good Fortune. Previously the swan. I’m here to bring Yuuri good fortune.” He looks so proud of himself.  
  
Yuuko doesn’t get it, smiles comfortingly to the white man. To Yuuri’s surprise, Takeshi believes him. He stares Victor down, face furrowed.  
  
“He’s serious?” Takeshi murmurs to Yuuri.  
  
“Very serious. He’s…yeah,” Yuuri finishes weakly. “He’s _yeah_ ,” he repeats. Victor rarely goes further than that with his introductions; he hasn’t divulged much more to Yuuri following the first night at the ice rink. So yeah,  it’s _yeah_.  
  
When it comes to running errands for his mom, Victor follows in his shadow, a finger to his lips, _his thinking face_ , the chore turns into an award show. They’re the one millionth customer and get free crab. They spin a roulette at a promotional road show and win a big screen TV that winds up in the main room of Yu-Topia. Victor wants Yuuri to go gambling, promising to make him a millionaire; Yuuri declines. Such misuse of his blessings, on top of everything else, just makes Yuuri uneasy. The town’s too small for that kind of nonsense.  
  
When Victor walks into a bar, it just so happens to be whenever someone celebrating is buying rounds for everyone. A promotion at work, a pregnant relative, a birthday. Victor drinks his way through Hasetsu without having to put so much as a coin on the table. Too many times now, Yuuri is there beside him, righteously drunk. They’re indecent, losing their shirts and having to paste together their nights the next day for any hope of maintaining a wardrobe. Victor doesn’t have an excess of shirts to be losing in the first place. No matter how horrendously the night goes and how pathetic Yuuri feels the next day, either in his bed or sprawled on the bedroll that remains permanent beside his bed, he never truly regrets the night. His hangovers, yes those are regretful, but he wakes up to Victor’s hand drowsily seeking his and wonders where his life began and ended before this man fell into his lap.  
  
On the days they wake up fighting fit, they run along the beach. Victor wants to talk to anyone and everyone; Yuuri’s run by the same fisherman for months and hasn’t ever said more than a passing greeting. But with Victor, they stop and talk for over an hour and up visiting the man, Mr. Mizushima, at his son’s ramen shop at the other end of town. Yuuri thinks maybe he’s been there once; it’s delicious, and Victor drinks the broth and coughs on the peppers at the bottom of the bowl. It’s offered on the house but Yuuri pays for the both of them. Victor finds crumpled bills almost every hour, but Yuuri makes him save them; there’s a growing jar in his bedroom of Victor’s piggy bank. Fortune or not, he impresses the importance of savings.  
  
It eats at Yuuri. It feels a bit too easy, a bit too fun. It’s never been this easy. Good Fortune. It’s a curse. He’s blissful one moment, basking in Victor’s glow, and the next he’s overwrought with worry, watching Victor’s shiny silver head bob up and down through crowds, spreading good cheer and being welcomed as heartily as family into all open arms. Into his own family’s arms. His parents adore him; Mari grows tolerant of Victor’s over exaggerated behavior as she has of Yuuri’s hesitations and outbursts.  
  
And Yuuri? He catches himself straining to stay awake at night, watching Victor sleeping, unable to quell the fear that one day he’ll wake up to Victor gone or never here at all. It’s the happiest he’s been in a long time.  
  
“He fits in,” his father says to Yuuri one night.  
  
Victor is studiously practicing how to dice onions with his mother. Mari’s on a date with the same guy she’s been seeing; she talks to Victor about it. Yuuri listens but he doesn’t have much dating advice, only his knowledge of Mari and how to encourage her. Victor, not well versed on cultural habits but seemingly so on matters of the heart, is a welcomed voice.  
  
“Thank you for taking him in without question.” Yuuri’s endlessly humbled by his parent’s generosity and acceptance. It’s what makes Yu-Topia the place that it is: the warm welcome its doors promise. The onsen remains busier than it has been in years but now they’ve adjusted to the volume. His father suspects Victor’s influence on the business but says nothing, accepting the boon graciously.  
  
“Yuuri! Come look at the good job I did,” Victor calls from the kitchen.  
  
“He did a very good job,” his mother’s voice follows. Victor gasps something pleased to her and she laughs. Yuuri thinks she calls Victor ‘son.’ It’s been two weeks since Victor became a man and a month since Yuuri came home with an ornery swan.  
  
Victor’s explained his Fortune a little better. He influences the world but it’s done so by will and spirit. He can influence change in his own life to a small and trivial degree but his magic works better when he has a Charmed figure to focus his influence. That’s Yuuri. Which means it was his desire for the onsen and his family to do well has brought them such popularity. But as Victor firmly noted when Yuuri doubted the onsen’s hand in its success, Victor can’t make Yu-Topia good. The extent of Victor’s influence in this scheme is really less than Yuuri suspects. People are simply acting on the harbored desire for a good soak; they spoil themselves and get his mom’s katsudon and of course they’re in love; someone leaves a shining review online and it ends up at the top of the page for attractions in Hasetsu.  
  
Yuuri gets to his feet and pats his father’s shoulder. Toshiya touches his son’s hand fondly. In the kitchen, Victor works side by side with his mother. Yuuri comes to rest his hip on the counter, smiling gently at the scene.  
  
“Look how even my onions are,” Victor points out with the tip of his knife. The round slices even out to mostly symmetrical shape. Yuuri nods his approval.  
  
“What about those?” Yuuri points to a forgotten pot, knowing full well what’s inside.  
  
“Oh. Your mom showed me how to make hot dogs look like octopuses. Aren’t they cute?” Victor pinches one up with a chopstick and holds it out to Yuuri expectantly.  
  


It's too easy.

* * *

  
Victor hides in the car  one day and ambushes Yuuri outside of Minako‘s studio. Yuuri’s just turned off the engine and reaching back for his changing bag when he discovers this.  
  
“Oh my god! Victor!” Yuuri heaves over the steering wheel.  
  
“I’m coming to work. I want to watch you dance,” Victor informs, stepping out of the car with a flourish, as if he hadn’t been hiding in the well of the back seats. “And you can’t stop me, Katsuki Yuuri.”  
  
“Why….are you…trying to kill me,” Yuuri moans, clutching his heart in his hand, keeping it in his chest.    
  
“I can’t change your fate for the better if you keep me at arms length, Yuuri,” Victor chirps, wrapping his knuckles on the driver’s side window to hurry him along.  
  
“What arm’s length?” Yuuri wonders aloud, lost. They share a room for goodness sake.  
  
**Arms length looks like this: also known as Yuuri’s life spiraling out of control:**  
  
“Yuuri, is this who’s been taking you out on the town so often?” Minako teases slyly when Yuuri enters the studio, Victor bouncing ahead of him and spinning a pirouette.  
  
“I’ve wanted to meet you sooner but Yuuri’s been selfish,” Victor greets distractedly, now inspecting the wall of mirrors, watching his own reflection move. Yuuri would call him vain and self-absorbed but he's a little more sympathetic when he knows that the Charm's been stuck as a swan for who knows how many years. Victor‘s dramatics war with the sheer joy of living; it prevents Yuuri from summoning ire for him. He‘s aware he‘s weak for Victor. You don‘t need to remind him. “I’m Victor, a Charm--”  
  
“My boyfriend,” Yuuri interrupts, his elaborate cover story spilling in a harried rush from lying lips.  “My charming boyfriend. Victor. He‘s a real charmer, if, like, anyone says anything. About him being charming. He‘s my boyfriend and he lives with me. We, uh, met online.”  
  
Minako lays a dainty hand over her mouth. She’s going to kill him later for keeping this a secret.  
  
Victor’s stands very still in the mirror, looking at Yuuri over the shoulder of his reflection. Yuuri widens his eyes imploringly and nods his head a fraction.  
  
“Victor Nikiforov. Yuuri’s charming boyfriend,“ Victor volunteers, approaching Minako with an extended hand, smile pristine white.  
  
“Wow.” She elbows Yuuri with her free arm but her eyes are glued to this unexpected development in her favorite instructor‘s life. “A pleasure.”  
  
Victor grins wider and sweeps Yuuri off his feet with an arm around his waist. They don’t speak of it during the class that Yuuri leads with his young beginners. Victor plays on Yuuri’s phone, watches him dance, practices the basics. He doesn’t have the footwork down but he entertains himself well enough and Yuuri only corrects him playfully.  
  
The godlike being Victor had been in his betwixt moments of transformation, a limitless body capable of the most beautiful extensions and executions of limb, did not exist in this form. Victor was a graceful man, possessed raw talent, but he had not lived a life of training in dance nor in ice skating. Yuuri had wished it otherwise since the first time he‘d taken Victor to the ice rink. Victor could skate a figure eight but any attempt to get both feet off the ice ended in body rolls and bruises. Yuuri had hoped -- hoped too much, hoped unwisely. He’d gone to the ice with Victor expecting the sunken pull of gravity to clutch his heart, for his thoughts to drown in a vibrato voice. He’d looked at Victor expecting a spectre of luminosity, an aching spring of wings and feather. Victor had smiled at him, unaware, waiting patiently for Yuuri to fetch him a pair of rental skates. Yuuri had done so, guilty with his disappointment.

  
  
“What about dancing, Yuuri? I could make you the premier danseur of the world,” Victor offers when he hands Yuuri a water bottle between classes.  
  
“I’m too old for that,” Yuuri laughs awkwardly, twisting away to drink.  
  
“Nonsense. We could make it happen.”  
  
“I like teaching,” Yuuri demurs.  
  
“Don’t you want to be more? Don’t you want the stage and the--” Victor spreads his hands widely, gesturing to the lights, the fame, the fans.  
  
“No.”  
  
It must come out harsher than Yuuri planned because Victor stops talking. He slinks away to play on Yuuri’s phone in the corner and watch. Yuuri spends the next class fighting not to look at him, stomach pinched the whole hour. But it’s true. He doesn’t want to be a professional dancer or a skater or a millionaire or whatever outlandish plot Victor comes up with next. Victor’s help would make it unfair and unfulfilling, and it’s true, Yuuri’s too old to try for anything athletic. The thought of grandeur makes him balk. That’s not him, that’s not his destiny.  
  
What’s a Charm of Good Fortune doing trying to make him into something he’s not?  
  
In the car after lessons, Yuuri lets the engine idle and the heater puff itself up. Victor remains uncharacteristically quiet; he’s waiting Yuuri out; he’s quiet but leaned over the middle console, face inches from Yuuri’s, his breath and his body a warm aura radiating just at the corner of Yuuri’s vision like a familiar ghost.  
  
“Look,” Yuuri crumbles, “you can’t just--”  
  
“Boyfriends!“ Victor exclaims, groping at Yuuri for a hand to hold, pressing a flourish of kisses to his bare knuckles. It surprises Yuuri only a little; he’s seen Victor selectively ignore anything he doesn't want to address. For his part, Yuuri ignores the butterflies that whir in his stomach. “It’s been decades since I’ve had a sweetheart,” he bemoans, going so far as to throw a hand over his head like some fair maiden. Yuuri’s disproportionately scandalized by the implication.  
  
Yuuri rolls his eyes and gingerly extracts his hand, cheeks hot. “It’s safer, o-okay? You can’t tell everyone you meet  that you’re - you’re you - you know -- A Charm of Good Fortune. Minako’s a blabbermouth sober and even worse drunk.” Hence why he’d kept them apart so long. With Victor’s indulgent hedonism, those two will be a combined force Hasetsu has no way to prepare for. Yuuri will be dragging them out of the gutters.  
  
“Why not?” Victor asks, genuinely confused. And it makes Yuuri want to shake him or slap him or slap himself and rid this dream from his reality.  
  
“You’ll get kidnapped! Or manipulated. Or I’ll get kidnapped and manipulated!” he sputters. He fails to restrain himself, in the height of boiling anxiety; he grabs Victor by the lapel of his coat, the coat that was spectacularly on sale, and hauls the Charm close. Their noses bump and their foreheads settle together, Yuuri‘s sticky with dried sweat. “Someone will take you seriously one of these times and take you for themselves.”  
  
Victor’s gasp swallows the ragged breath Yuuri lets out. They’re too close, the car’s sickly warm, heat squealing through the vents.  
  
“That won’t happen,” Victor gentles, slipping his fingers around Yuuri’s hand where it clutches his coat. He eases Yuuri off him but doesn’t relinquish his hold. Yuuri’s shaking, a tremor in his hands that builds in his core; his shoulders are stiff with an ache that berates his spine, making him feel old, as if he’d not stretched after practice.  
  
“You don’t know that. You influence this world but you don’t control it; you can’t account for what people would do if they wanted hard enough. And--,” Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut; Victor’s looking at him like Yuuri’s the dark side of the moon, pitch and mystery. He can‘t hold Victor‘s gaze. “you shouldn’t even be here with me in the first place. So it could happen. And then what would you do?”  
  
“Yuuri,” Victor tries, tone consoling, placating.  
  
Yuuri jerks his hand out of Victor and slouches against the driver’s side door, relinquishing all the space he’d killed between them. Victor glares at the wide birth, glares at him, all his practiced smiles, his Charm, cast off.  
  
“I don’t know what you mean when you say I’m not supposed to be here,” Victor argues.  
  
“I got you stuck here. And you don’t know how to even do what you’re trying to do,” Yuuri continues heatedly. He feels his secrets spilling out, his midnight fears baring themselves eagerly. It’d been too easy. He’d been too happy. Despair’s quick to gather in the cottony meat of his mouth and behind his eyes, lurking.  
  
“Is that what you think?” Victor responds, stiff and resistant. He sits away as well, both of them squared off against each other. The car’s a trap, caging them too close.  
  
“You said it yourself, the first night. I Charmed you, or was Charmed, however your magic works. You wanted to be a free man and be your own person and what happens? You get stuck with me. And I’m not worth trying to bring Fortune. I don’t want it! I don‘t want money or false stardom or whatever you think Fortune is.”  
  
Hurt strobes in Victor‘s bright eyes, but he shuts it away. All his freedom of whim and expression, and still he relies on only a few faces. “You don’t know what you want at all,” Victor fires back, hot steel. “I’ve been offering you opportunities and nothing satisfies you. If you don‘t want me here, I can leave. You’re the one who doesn’t know what you’re doing with your life, has no dreams. ”  
  
“I’m figuring it out!” Yuuri screams, cracking on a sob. His outcry rings in the car, slowly suffocated by the upholstery, their bodies. Yuuri’s mouth hangs open, lock jawed by mortification, but his throat works to cry, and he chokes, trying and failing to swallow tears that gush hot and unforgiving down his cheeks. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Victor’s defensiveness and anger falls away with each tears running down Yuuri’s cheek. Yuuri’s lip trembles and he hiccups out another sob, then another, gulping and shivering with them. His glasses clatter into his lap as he wipes frantically at his face, at first trying to make the tears vanish and finally trying to hide them.  
  
“I d-don’t wa-want you t-to leave.”  
  
He’s pathetic to his own ears. He’s selfish.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he repeats.  
  
The car door opens. He can’t look as he listens to the sound of Victor leaving. The door closing. He cries harder, curling into himself. There. He got what he deserves; he’s freed Victor from whatever magic trap had landed him here in the first place, had bound him to Yuuri Katsuki.  
  
The door behind him opens and Yuuri tumbles backwards, falling into Victor who makes squawks, sounding quite like his swan self.  
  
“Oh, Yuuri! I didn’t mean to do that -- oh but you’ve stopped crying. I meant to do that. Shh, please, look at me,” Victor pleads, hands fluttering around Yuuri worriedly before settling to holding his hot cheeks.  
  
“You didn’t leave?” Yuuri asks dumbly, sniffling and wiping his face on his sleeve. His emotions abate, leave him with a shocky numbness but a clearer head, something rattled loose. It’d felt good to cry, even for a minute.  
  
Victor bites his lip and rests his forehead against Yuuri’s, exhaling hotly across his cry-red lips. “No. I didn’t know what to do with the…crying…I was going to let you get it out but I couldn’t stand to walk away from you,” he says softly. He’s dry-eyed but his voice catches on something raw and tacky, like a peeled scab.  
  
“You’re so vulnerable with your emotions, Yuuri,” and now he sounds fond, tucking Yuuri’s hair out of his face and smiling into his watery eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Yuuri says again; he’s not sure he feels sorry so much as embarrassed. Victor hums, somewhere between a laugh and a scold.  
  
“No, it’s very refreshing. But stressful! You really make me think my Charm’s wearing off when you cry on me.”  
  
“O-okay. I’m sorry. ”  
  
Victor huffs and hugs him closer, resting his head on Yuuri’s shoulder. They’re straddling each other on the parking lot outside of the studio, the car running with the catch-purr of the engine.  
  
“I don’t know how to bring you your Fortune if you don’t want it,” Victor admits quietly. “I’ve never had to do it consciously, I’ve never gotten to choose who I’m blessing.”  
  
“But you didn’t--”  
  
“I chose you,” Victor insists sharply, turning his head so his nose pokes into the softness of Yuuri’s cheek. “I want to be here.”  
  
“You do?” Yuuri sniffs and clears his throat. Victor sits back and nods; his smile’s soft and real, not the smile like someone’s drawn it on his face. Yuuri’s own answers back, hesitant to uncurl but sitting warmly across his lips. “I want you to stay.”  
  
“I will.”  
  
“Even if it takes me a long time to figure everything out?”  
  
“I look forward to it.”  
  
They pick up groceries for his mom on the way back, the reason why he had the car in the first place. The conversation’s left Yuuri drained and distracted. Victor’s not trapped to him but willingly here, choosing to bless Yuuri. But Yuuri, without a dream to realize and not desiring great sums of money, can’t have his Fortune yet made. Will Victor leave when whatever he thinks he can do for Yuuri is done? Where will he go? Will his Keeper, Yakov, let him run off for the rest of this incarnation’s lifetime or will he be spellbound as a swan once more? Maybe Yuuri should ask; Victor had said Yuuri’s prayers to him and desire for something miraculous to change in his life, his yearning, had been the beacon to bring them together.  
  
He helps make dinner in a daze and sits silent throughout. Victor’s his usual self, complimenting his mom and messing with Mari and entertaining his dad with a strange mix of facts collected over passive decades.  
  
When Yuuko texts him demanding to know why she had to find out from Minako that Victor was his boyfriend Yuuri gives up and retires to the hot springs. He doesn’t have to open his eyes when a body slides in next to him some minutes later to know that it’s Victor.  
  
A pinky finger curls around his beneath the water. Yuuri responds in kind. Then their ring fingers, then middle and so on, until Victor’s palm kisses his and Yuuri grips him tight.  
  
“You’ve never had a lover,” Victor speculates gingerly. It’s not wholly unexpected, with Minako gushing to Victor about her shy flower Yuuri, but Yuuri’s glad the hot water’s already built a flush in his body. Victor’s seen enough of his vulnerabilities for one day.  
  
Victor purrs into his ear: “I find that _very_ interesting, Yuuri.”  
  
The gathered moisture on his lips kisses the fine hairs on Yuuri’s ear. Yuuri shivers and sinks lower in the water, finally opening his eyes.  
  
“Cat.”  
  
There’s a white cat perched on one of the stones that juts from the water.  
  
“Yuri!”  
  
“Hmm?”  
  
“No.“ Victor’s gaping at the cat. “Yuri. My brother.”  
  
Victor disentangles his hand from Yuuri’s and pushes off from the wall. He paddles out to the rock. A chill air sweeps over the springs and Yuuri shivers as he watches Victor meet the cat, the Charm, his brother.  
  
“Yuri,” Victor says happily, reaching up out of the water. The cat hisses at him and bats out a claws, leaving red scratches slashed across Victor’s hand. It turns and leaps, springing from rock to rock until it’s gone from the spring, vanished among décor and bushes.  
  
“Are you okay?” Yuuri swims out to him. Victor holds his hand above the water; a little blood wells up in one of the scratches, the deepest. Victor licks it off, nodding, expression tight.  
  
“It’s nothing. He’s just mad at me. He‘s quite young, really. And well, he has a lot of spirit, you might say, a lot of energy.” He looks around for his brother while Yuuri inspects his hand. They can’t have an open wound, no matter how small, in the onsen.  
  
“Cause I’m not a fucking geriatric like you,” comes a boy’s voice.  
  
Yuuri and Victor turn back towards the inn to see a blond haired boy with blue eyes like Victor’s standing naked and irate.  
  
“Yuri!” Victor waves, scratches forgotten.  
  
The newest Charm in Yuuri’s life sneers and crosses his arms around a skinny torso. “You ran away to sit in an oversized bathtub? God, Victor, do you have any idea how much trouble you cause? Everyone’s losing their shit because of you.”  
  
“Let me guess,” Victor says delicately, putting his wounded hand to his cheek and smiling annoyingly. “you don’t have permission to be here either.”  
  
Yuri flicks his hair and even Yuuri can see it’s a dead give away. “I’m here to bring you home, Victor.”  
  
The only movement is Yuuri’s face falling, the shock. It catches Yuri’s attention; his eyes cut to Yuuri. He’d be a pretty boy, more delicate than Victor, but he holds his face with an unwarranted amount of tension, his jaw jutted. It’s a lot of posturing but the threat in his eyes is very real.  
  
“And who the hell are you stealing away my brother?”  
  
“Yuri, watch your mouth,” Victor chastises, shaking his head. “Don’t talk to my Yuuri that way. Ah. You’re my Yuri too, my sweet little brother,” he fawns, obviously ignoring everything around him and distracting his brother from unleashing any more fury towards Yuuri. “That’s going to get confusing.”  
  
He taps rapidly at his lips, tutting and muttering in another language, which Yuri spits something back in that makes Victor laugh. The foot stomp and groan Yuri performs belies his act. Charm or not, that’s a teenager, and a lot of the intimidation bleeds out of Yuuri. It’s not replaced with relief. Victor’s brother has come to take him home.  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was hard to put together >.>


	6. Good Night

“You need to wash before you enter the spring.”  
  
Victor and Yuri break from jabbing at each other in their rough rolling language to fix their attentions on Yuuri. Victor’s expression flattens at the tone of Yuuri‘s voice; Yuri’s furrows into another sneer that’s unbecoming and misplaced with his delicate features.  
  
“I don’t want to bathe with you,” Yuri snaps. Even so, Yuuri wades back to the edge and climbs out, taking his towel from his head and covering himself.  
  
“I’ll fetch you a robe if you plan to remain in this form,” he says coolly, looking down at the boy. Yuri juts his jaw, daring Yuuri to slap him. He‘s come all this way and Yuuri has the suspicion he has no plan but his anger and the pull of kinship. “Victor.”  
  
“Yes, my Yuuri?” Victor sings, whiplash in his spirits. He’s congenial once more, mouth a red compliant curl of a smile.  
  
“Victor…” Yuri growls, eyeballing his older brother with fermenting shame.  
  
“Mind your brother for me.” He could do without the untamed Charm pulling tricks. If he were to make an accurate guess of how his night plans to proceed, he may very well need a breather from Victor and the antics to follow from him as well as from Yuri.  
  
“That idiot couldn‘t mind a rock,” Yuri spits at Yuuri’s retreating form. A familiar fluttering noise quivers suddenly in the air. Yuuri turns, expectant; a blood-thump beat fills the hollow of his ear; there’s no lights or spectacle, only the white cat where the boy had been. Yuri takes off, lost instantly from sight.  
  
“He’s a little dramatic,” Victor consoles, stepping out of the water, making no move for modesty. Yuuri’s long used to it and rivets him with a dry look.  
  
“His dramatics are proof he’s your brother.”  
  
Victor stumbles back as if shot, gasping after Yuuri who can’t help but smile. Victor returns with one of his own, soft at the edges, his eyes soft too as they consider Yuuri through a fringe of wet silver hair.  
  
“I’m sorry about him.”  
  
Yuuri turns away, loosing a stuck-up breath from his lungs. His body thins out with it, a beaten down pillow released from the weight of a heavy sleeper. Victor steps closer; water from their bodies runs to the gray stones and blackens it in lazy deluge. The puddles beneath their feet converge. It’s too cold to be standing out but they don’t move, Yuuri staring down at his bare feet, past them.  
  
“He’s hurt, isn’t he? That you left him behind.”  
  
Victor looks away, gaze following the missing trail of his brother. His eyes don’t sweep the grounds or slide out of focus; he looks like he really sees where his brother went, some phantom trail of his body left behind. His sleek face bares up heavy wrinkles, deep set tension churned at the corner of his mouth and between his brows.  
  
Yuuri hates that look on him even though it feels right; that Victor should be shaken like this, brought down. His anger in the car earlier today had been painful to be the subject of but the lightness that came after made it worth it; Yuuri wants Victor to cry.  
  
Ah, perhaps when Victor inevitably bids him farewell, he’ll see that beautiful face red wet and ruined. It would be good for Victor to let himself break apart; it feels better when you come back whole.  
  
“We should make him dinner,” Yuuri says, breaking into Victor’s silent thoughts. Victor looks dazed coming back to the present, but his clarity returns with a warmth that Yuuri, emboldened, captures by taking Victor’s hand in his own and squeezing. Victor blinks, silver lashes in snowy clusters that flutter and melt.  
  
“Rice porridge?” Victor asks, linking his fingers with Yuuri’s and stepping closer, looking down at Yuuri in a  way that makes Victor’s nudity suddenly conspicuous despite its routine nature.  
  
“I think k-katsudon,” Yuuri huffs, stiffening momentarily at the hesitant touch of Victor’s fingertips to the skin of his hip just above the small towel preserving his sense of decorum.  
  
“He has far more energy than you did…ah…V-victor,” Yuuri sucks his bottom lip into his mouth when Victor takes him by the hip with his full hand, a blaze on his skin. The chill of the night lifts from his body, pushed away by a roaring heat that ignites as if he’s been struck by a whip of lightning.  
  
“Yuuri.”  
  
“Victor…”  
  
“Yuuri, open your eyes.”  
  
Oh. He’s closed them. He opens one hesitantly; it reveals a patiently amused Victor. It seems safe to open his other eye as well; he doesn’t need much experience to predict what’s about to happen.  
  
“I wanted to kiss you tonight,” Victor says conspiratorially, absolutely confident and wickedly pleased when Yuuri whines and shivers as he lays the hand not clutching Yuuri’s naked hip onto Yuuri’s neck, trailing lightly to cradle the top notches of his spine with an admiring palm. “I suspect I won’t have another chance with Yuri joining us.”  
  
“Uh.” Yuuri licks nervously at his bottom lip, chewing on it further. Victor makes no attempt to hide how obviously his attention drags from Yuuri’s eyes to his mouth, then up, leaning in with a tilted head, thumb rubbing comfortingly at the ridge of Yuuri’s hip bone.  
  
The little towel isn’t going to be worth much very soon with how the anticipation makes his blood sing and rush. Arousal’s pooling between his legs, taking all of Yuuri’s nervousness with it, leaving him dizzy with an eager drunkenness for contact, for this promised kiss.  
  
Victor will leave him eventually. He knows this. But if he’s learned nothing from being with the Charm day in and day out, it’s that Yuuri should let the good come to him as it does.  
  
Evidently, no one should deliberate on a kiss this long because Victor’s expression turns waxen and he begins to retreat, hand withdrawing from its intimate hold on Yuuri. “Did I misread--”  
  
“No!” Yuuri catches Victor’s hand and presses it to his cheek, turning his face into the touch and kissing the heel of Victor’s palm in a rush of affection. He laughs, high and bubbling over. “Kiss me. I want you to kiss me, Victor, you have no idea--”  
  
He’s still talking when Victor laughs into a kiss that happens too fast and out of sync. Their smiles click, a noisy harmless clatter of teeth, a bit of a pinch on the lips. Victor _mmffs_ into Yuuri’s mouth and resets his hand to guide Yuuri into a second slide of lips; Yuuri’s delighted, blinded -- no wait, his eyes have closed again -- but they kiss and kiss until they stop laughing into each others mouths and sigh instead, stepping chest to chest. Yuuri drops his towel and loops his arms around Victor’s neck and Victor holds Yuuri by the waist, shaking slightly. It’s edges into a frantic pace; Yuuri finds himself drawing in loud hungry breathes through his nose so that his mouth never has to leave Victor’s. And Victor is hot against him, painting Yuuri’s mouth with flushed muffled _mewls_ of pleasure.  
  
It comes to a dangerous edge when Victor arches into him, sliding his erection against Yuuri’s. Yuuri squeaks, overcome with the immediate, whitened desire to split apart and take Victor into his body and to suck and to bury himself into Victor like a sacrifice. Standing in front of the glass doors of the bath house of his parents inn is not the place.  
  
“V-Victor, s-stop,” Yuuri pants, twisting away; the world’s bleary and dim. Victor makes an irritated noise at being denied kisses and makes his complaints to Yuuri’s neck. Yuuri moans, relinquishing his weight to Victor who scoops him into his arms and bites into his shoulder playfully.  
  
“I know,” Victor sighs, but he makes no motion to stop peppering Yuuri with kisses: shoulder collarbone and shoulder and back up his neck, honing in across cheek and nose to captures Yuuri’s lips once more.  
  
It’s a fantastic argument. Yuuri would love to let Victor continue. His own hands have reached the base of Victor’s spine and Victor’s wiggling his hips and pressing firmly against him and it’s all wonderful and making his mind numb with the simplicity of desire. But there’s a teenage Charm somewhere nearby and his sister is definitely still awake and maybe a guest and this sort of behavior is very much not allowed at the springs.  
  
Yuuri ducks beneath Victor’s chin and hugs him in a tight circle of arms, planting his hot face into Victor’s shoulder.  
  
“Too much,” Yuuri puffs. “Very nice. Must stop.”  
  
It’s not eloquent, but Victor detaches his hands from Yuuri in surrender before resettling them much higher, hugging Yuuri back and resting his chin on Yuuri’s head. They breathed in silence, both tingling and shuddering with the sudden build up and the slow burn that will bring them back down to clearer minds.  
  
“Wow,” Victor gushes, sounding more awed than Yuuri thinks he has a right to be. Yuuri’s the one dumbstruck. “That was -- wow. You’re so soft and kissable, Yuuri, did you know that? This is awful. I want to kiss you all over.”  
  
Yuuri bites a pinch of skin between his teeth. Victor yips and buries his face into Yuuri’s hair. “You are too naked to be saying things like that to me right now,” he grouses; the blood from his dick swims back to his face; he’s too light headed for Victor’s verisimilitude. He wants to and plans to do the same to Victor and then some, to make sure that Victor's human body carries so much love and worship he'll never forget the freedom of it.  
  
Victor laughs, and the proof of his happy nakedness rubs against Yuuri’s. It’s all very terrible. Penises: Yuuri’s nemesis. He would like to extravagantly vanquish Victor’s.

* * *

  
Yuuri manages to pull Victor inside and throw his clothes at him. The interior lights, the lockers, the normalcy of the setting making the kiss and Victor that much more difficult for Yuuri to fit into the schema of his life. But it now has a place. And he confidently thinks, there will be more of it in his life if he’s so lucky.  
  
They dress with no sign of Yuri and little conversation but plenty of teasing touches that prevent Yuuri from spiraling. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a long time coming. Victor looks relaxed for once, eased and blurred around the manikin edges of his usual poses.  
  
“Hey, Victor, how come Yuri can shift between his Charm form and his person form?” Yuuri asks, finally able to return to his initial curiosity.  
  
“He’s not yet sixteen,” Victor answers breezily.  
  
“That means nothing to me.”  
  
They’re in the kitchen, Yuuri trying to quietly get all the ingredients and necessary cookware out without making too much noise. Victor’s slicing onions without having to be asked.  
  
“Until a Charm spends sixteen full years as a person, they can shift forms without much effort. Yuri’s still a child; he will eventually settle into as a cat for who knows how long once his Charm magic settles. Right now, he’s uncoordinated as a Charm. He should bring Good Grace but he’s too young to have much control over his influence. I excuse most of his bratty behavior for this reason.”  
  
“Basically…puberty.”  
  
“I suppose!”  
  
Yuuri frowns, pushing aside his bowl of mixed eggs. “So I do have a runaway child in my home.” Fantastic. “How long will it take for him to revert back to a person once he’s in his Charm form officially?”  
  
Victor’s always so reluctant to talk about himself as a Charm, Yuuri has to learn as much as possible while he’s in a sharing mood.  
  
“There’s no fixed duration. It’s a matter of the Charm’s willpower and an outside force that compels it. While being in our Charm form lets our influence flow more smoothly, almost like an aura, as a person we can work more precisely. Ah,” Victor frowns at the cutting board. He sniffs and rubs the back of his hand across his eyes: onions. “When I was a swan, I brought general Good Fortune to everyone in the vicinity. But as Victor, I focus on an individual because I must consciously focus. All my magic I have to think about, which actually makes it more difficult because I have to consider what I influence and the consequences.”  
  
Yuuri knows that it was his prayers to the swan that empowered Victor’s ability to shift out of that form. Yuuri was open with his need and it compelled Victor’s magic, allowing him to focus. Which means Yuri will be subject to the same fate of happenstance. It can take decades for release. Hence why Victor fled, on a mission to find just that.  
  
“So…when you’re a swan…it’s sort of like you’re a ceiling fan, gently cooling the whole room,” Yuuri hedges. Victor scrunches up his face and Yuuri rushes on with his insulting but simple analogy. “But when you’re Victor, it’s like you’re a fan just for me blowing in my face.”  
  
“I’ve never been so insulted,” Victor grumbles.  
  
“But is that accurate?”  
  
Victor snorts and nods, wagging his knife loosely. “Yes, but don’t let Yuri hear you say that. He’ll give you rabies.”  
  
He grins and Yuuri laughs, turning back to his cooking. “When I first saw you, you looked younger, with long hair and you were covered in feathers.”  
  
“Oh, I was so beautiful,” Victor bemoans. “Just turned sixteen. You should have seen me, Yuuri, I could do anything then. My magic was a directionless force but I could do anything I set my mind to, it was spectacular. I was so free back then.”  
  
Yuuri believes it. He believes it of Victor as he is now too.

 

  
  
The smell of food lures Mari out of her bedroom. Or that’s Yuuri’s first assumption when he hears his sister call from the hallway. Katsukis always show up for a meal even if they’re not invited.  
  
“I found the cutest cat ever,” Mari declares, joining them in the kitchen and holding a disgruntled Yuri in her arms. “Did you two let him in?”  
  
“No that’s--”  
  
“--my brother.”  
  
Mari screams when the cat in her arms tumbles out of her hands and lands as a teenager on the kitchen floor.

 

  
  
Yuri inhales his food with the same terrifying gusto Victor had; it takes Victor poking him in the side a few times to force out begrudged gratitude. Yuri keeps his head down, manner less and unrefined as he scarfs down the katsudon followed by bowls of rice and cups of tea. Victor ignores him, focused on chatting with Yuuri and Mari.  
  
Mari puts the Yuri/Yuuri matter to rest within minutes: “He’s Yurio.”  
  
Yuri is unimpressed.  
  
“We could call you little kitty if you prefer,” Victor teases. Yuri flicks him off and shifts the moment his bowl is empty, slinking out from the guest robe Yuuri gave him. Yuuri expects him to dash off but Yurio climbs into Victor’s lap with a gravelly purr, curling up with his back to the Katsukis.  
  
“We essentially have a naked teenage boy running around the inn,” Mari points out, rising from her seat to sit by the window, sliding it open to smoke. The air’s still outside; cold invites itself inside politely through the invitation. “Not sure Mom will love that too much.”  
  
“Victor and I will take him shopping tomorrow,” Yuuri hastily remedies.  
  
“I have a big bag to hide him in,” Victor says, scratching behind Yuri’s flicking ear.  
  
Mari laughs at the idea. “Inconspicuous. Oy, Yuri, does Mom know that you meant Victor when he was naked?”  
  
“Mom met Victor when he was watching me sleep, Mari, I don’t think his rampant nudity is much of an issue.”  
  
“Your mother adores me,” Victor states proudly. Yuuri stretches his legs out beneath the table so his foot touches Victor’s folded knee. Victor wraps his hand around Yuuri’s ankle beneath his pantleg; that alone is enough to bring heat and chills back to Yuuri’s skin. They share a look.  
  
“Why Mari, are you starting to think that our parents are cool?”  
  
Toshiya and Hiroko Katsuki are not cool.  
  
Mari stares at her cigarette as one would a cookie taken at midnight to satiate boredom rather than hunger. “They love us so much that it doesn’t matter.”

 

* * *

  
  
Victor puts Yuri to sleep on the pillow of the bedroll. Yuuri’s left staring at the tightly curled cat with a flat unimpressed look while Victor beams at him in the near-dark of the bedroom with a mouth freshly clean and sparkling.  
  
“You are an omen of ill will,” Yuuri curses in a whisper. Victor pulls back the comforter on his bed and slides in, patting the free space next to him invitingly. “And a deviant.”  
  
“Sleep with me, Yuuri,” Victor cries. He makes a show of fluffing the pillow and tugging the blankets up to his chin. “I’ll be good.”  
  
“Your little brother is right there,” Yuuri hisses, but who’s he kidding. He climbs in gingerly, heart racing and face already hot. He resolutely lays down with his back to Victor, like that’ll do any good. If they start kissing, it’ll be impossible to sleep. Victor’s inevitable embrace is familiar, as affectionate and ebullient of a man that he is, but now Yuuri doesn’t have to hold himself back from accepting the touch, from letting his desire be known. He’s blessed. He’s blessed. Victor flattens a hand over the racket of Yuuri’s heartbeat and hums, sliding closer until nothing remains between them. It’s sweltering under the blanket and Yuuri is dead with love.  
  
“A lot happened today,” Victor whispers. Like this, his voice comes out in a slow tear of noise, frayed with sleep and a hidden emotion. Today was unexpectedly full; it already feels like another lifetime. Victor’s breath on his neck is another lifetime, began over and over with each exhale that tickles willowy the fine hairs on Yuuri’s skin.  
  
“Good things,” Yuuri mumbles.  
  
“Very good,” Victor agrees. He presses his sharp nose into Yuuri’s shoulder and squeezes him. “Kiss me goodnight?”  
  
Yuuri’s weak for Victor, no need to remind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for the love !! every comment means a lot to me and makes me smile. I know we didnt get very much Yuri in this chapter but I promise he has a lot more dialogue and character in the next one. He's sort of just a grumpy brat here and Yuuri and Victor needed to clear the air!


	7. Wicked Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah okay. I sat down and wrote out a bunch of plot stuff and then wrote this chapter in a sitting. I know how the story goes. I think only a few chapters left...but I always say that.
> 
> And thanks to the folks to hit up my kofi link. I had to take it down tho cuz I got reported: apparently it's a violation of terms and services. Whoops!!

Yuuri doesn’t need his alarm this morning. An alarm that obeys relative and abstract systems of time and numbers, to be more precise. He doesn’t need such a device to wake him up because he’s been blessed with an abundance - that is one or more - Charms in his life. In his room. His bed. His mouth.  
  
Yuri flexes his paw inside Yuuri’s mouth and lets needle thin nails clench and unclench into the unsuspecting tongue that lies helpless and dormant. Yuuri, predictably, launches himself from sleep. Yuri narrowly misses having his foot bitten off and leaps from Yuuri onto Victor. Victor takes a foot on the nose and honks loud and ugly, batting at his face and elbowing Yuuri in the kidney. Yuuri greets his bedroom floor with a thankless curse.  
  
Victor sniffs from bed and rolls over to the edge to pat a hand on Yuuri’s back. “So…do you want to go for a morning run.”  
  
“Don’t even look at me right now,” Yuuri threatens through his teeth.  
  
Victor slinks under the warm blankets with a shoddy whistle. “Grouchy.”  
  
Yuuri leaves Victor in bed and doesn’t bother looking for Yuri, where ever he’s gone. He’ll turn up underfoot, Yuuri suspects. The newest Charm doesn’t strike him as destructive or hugely problematique given how little concern Victor’s showing him. Although…Victor rarely focuses on a real problem and prefers to pick around the edges. He’s only direct when it suits him, and his brother will likely be a circular topic. Fantastic. Yuuri’s gone and given himself a headache to match the bruises from falling out of bed.  
  
“Morning mom, morning dad,” Yuuri greets with a yawn when he drags himself into the kitchen. He’ll help his mom make breakfast and prep lunch, then he’ll go to the studio to teach, maybe practice on his own after. While Yuuri doesn’t plan to take Victor up on being a sudden star in the dance world, Victor had been enthusiastic about Yuuri trying his hand at dance with a little more direction. He could join an amateur troop and perform at festivals. There’s one in Fukoaka; he planned to take Victor there for the shedding of bad luck, as a joke.  
  
It’s next week. Victor might not even be here. But he’d wanted to go.  
  
“You look awful,” his father says brightly over the check book. “Were you out drinking with Victor again?”  
  
Yuuri groans and caps off another yawn with a fist over his mouth. “No, for once, no. Victor’s just so clingy in bed, we kept waking each other up.”  
  
“Oh!” His mother chirps, eyes going wide and wide face going wider. “So you two _are_ like that.”  
  
“Huh?” Yuuri grunts through the tail of his yawn, words and eyes bleary. “Hmm?”  
  
Hiroko pats her boy on the cheeks, pink with joy. “He’s such a nice man.”  
  
“I like him,” Toshiya agrees. Yuuri’s parents turn to each other, sharing a smile and a chaste kiss on the lips, an intermission of suspicions pleasantly realized before they resume their separate motions. Dad continues scanning the checkbook and the bank statement. His mom cracks eggs. The tea kettle shivers delightfully, whistling the good news.  
  
Yuuri’s gaze slides out of focus and his words circle back to him. He understands now. That would…yes that implies quite a lot about his sleep and him and Victor. They kissed. They kissed several times, many meetings of the lips. Victor had been hard; Yuuri had been hard. Yuuri had experienced very concrete desire to touch Victor over his entire body, inside his body, to make him sing soft sighs of pleasure like only known in fantasy.  
  
Right right. Right.  
  
“Mom…we - we-  kissed,” Yuuri whispers, groping for his mother’s sleeve, hooking his hands into the string of her apron. “We k-kissed,” he proclaims.  
  
“He’s very handsome. Pretty, maybe, a bit of a pretty boy,” Hiroko acknowledges, cutting a whisk through her egg batter. She slides her eyes to Yuuri, measuring her son’s renewed shock. “He’s very affectionate. He’s not being too affectionate, is he? Charm or not, I’ll sick your sister on him if he’s rough with your heart.”  
  
“Moooom,” Yuuri whimpers, shoving his face into the soft meat of her shoulder. She hums and sways and Yuuri wraps his arms around her waist; she smells like cooking. She always smells like cooking. Perfume never sat right on skin that breathes ginger and chili and sesame. A toasted, hot smell; Yuuri wants to wrap up in the everyday comfort of her.  
  
“Is that a no?”  
  
“We _kissed_ ,” Yuuri repeats, face burning hot; he can feel it again. The drop of his stomach when Victor had pulled him close; the clumsy suck Yuuri had given his bottom lip; the noise Victor had made when Yuuri brushed a hand across his bare ass.  
  
Too much!  
  
“Uhm, and his little brother showed up. He’s a white cat, or an angry blond teenager. If he’s rude, make Victor deal with him. I’ll be at work all day.”  
  
“Another?” His dad asks. “What’s this one’s magical power?”  
  
“Grace?” Yuuri answers hesitantly, releasing his mom. He pours the kettle over into a ceramic pot and moves it to the kitchen table. “Victor says he’s not good at his, uhm, magic yet. Because he’s so young.”  
  
His parents agree that that makes sense. Yuuri supposes it does.  


* * *

  
Mari had finally appeared to handle serving the overnight guests, and Yuuri breaks away to shower and dress. It’s a dry day, the cold giving a few inches in the advent of spring. Victor’s a lump in bed when Yuuri creeps in to fetch clothes. He’s awake when Yuuri returns freshly showered and groomed.  
  
“You going to the studio?” Victor says, sitting up in bed and looking around, no doubt for his brother. Victor keeps the comforter around his shoulders, swaddled over his head. Yuuri knees onto the bed beside him and pushes the curtains open, letting the colorless morning drift into the room. Victor slumps against Yuuri, trying gamely to smother him back to bed.  
  
“Some of us work,” Yuuri chides, slipping away from Victor and off the bed, suddenly nervous. They’d kissed goodnight, a slow cherished meet and farewell of lips. And in the night, Yuuri can recall sleepy kisses too, lazy exchanges of tongue and muggy breath as they adjusted their positions; those are dreamlike, unclear if they were real but Yuuri knows too easily now the texture and pressure of Victor’s mouth. They’d slept together with all that heat stirred under their skin, with their legs entwined and their arms cradling breathes and heartbeats. With fingertips stealing victorious tastes of skin that gilded hazy half-dreams. Will it be that way now until it isn’t? It’s a terrifying possibility.  
  
“You’re worrying,” Victor says.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“You’re a terrible liar,” he scoffs. He’s just a face surrounded by blanket but in that face Yuuri can see the tension of uncertainty in his whole baring, the caution filling his eyes. After yesterday, victor won’t prod any perceived sore spots. Or, he will but with a delicateness too easy for Yuuri to dodge. Yuuri folds his arms to hide a brutal pinch to his own skin.

“Kissing you made me feel a lot. Like. A whole lot, Victor. And Yurio wants to take you home. And we had that fight. And I don’t know what I want. There’s a lot for me to worry about, legitimately for once, not just my normal plane crash spiral anxiety hellfest where I don’t know if things are okay or if it’s just me,” Yuuri waves his hands around, sucking in a deep breath. “It’s so much! Are we kissing now? Will your brother pee on my things? I told my parents we kissed and they gave us their blessing unless you‘re a jerk in which case Mari will fight you and you don’t want that.”  
   
“Wow,” Victor acknowledges. He shimmies out of his blanket cocoon and throws his legs over the edge of the bed, giving Yuuri his full attention but not making any moves to close the space otherwise, for once. Yuuri breathes hard, arms wrapped tight across his chest. Victor smiles reassuringly. “I definitely don’t want Mari to beat me up.”  
  
Yuuri rolls his eyes, but the easy acceptance of his outburst makes some of the jitters run from his body.  
  
Victor holds up his hand, fingers spread, returning to his typical bright and benevolent expression.

  1. “Kissing you made me feel a lot too. It rekindled in me feelings that are new for you, so it’s not the same as what you feel, but it’s special and overwhelming.” He puts down a finger.
  2. “I’m happy here.” He puts down another finger.
  3. "You said you’ll figure it out. I believe you. We have all the time in the world.” Another point checked off.
  4. “We don’t have to kiss again. We don’t have to do anything. I’d like to be your lover; you can have me, Yuuri. I want you to have me.” He presses his remaining index finger to his lips, tapping it thoughtfully and musing loudly.
  5. “I’m only mostly certain Yurio won’t pee on your things.”



  
He looks at Yuuri expectantly, as if he’d solved all the problems in the world, piece of cake. “Does that help?”  
  
“H-h-how can you just say all that,” Yuuri gapes behind a bracket of embarrassed hands.  
  
Victor shrugs. “I’m too old; don’t you always tell me I’m shameless and embarrassing and a menace to your composure and truly a wicked demon who’s come to-- _mmff_.”  
  
Yuuri shushes Victor with a hand to his mouth, toppling him onto the bed. “You are a wicked demon who’s come to torment my mortal soul!”  
  
Victor laughs beneath him, teeth grazing Yuuri’s palm. “I also get to enjoy your passionate responses to my words.”  
  
Yuuri removes his hand to better see Victor’s gaping smile, the stretched pink heart of his lips and how his cheeks rose up to squash his eyes to a silken sunrise of lashes. Victor’s beautiful in stillness, but he’s breathtaking in movement. When he smiles like this, Yuuri thinks, this is how people fall in love. Wanting to live a life that makes someone smile like this.  
  
Victor quiets when Yuuri cups his cheek and he even gasps when Yuuri drops his head down to match them forehead to forehead, noses slotting beside each other.  
  
“I have to go to work, you wicked demon,” Yuuri tells him softly. Their eyelashes tickle and catch as lightly as pollen lands on a petal. Victor lies mute, pupils blown in the glade of his eyes. Yuuri relishes it, and for a moment, life feels simple. His head quiet. He presses Victor down into bed only to release him and beat a hasty exit. “Bye!”  
  
“What have I done?,” Victor says aloud, remaining inert and prone on the bed. Katsuki Yuuri is a monster.  
  
“You’re disgusting, do you know that?” answers Yurio’s voice. He drops down onto the bed, bouncing Victor. “Find me some pants too. Can we eat. Do you have any money? You should, you good for nothing gold mine. You seriously ran away to date some guy who’s such a loser even you can’t turn him into a prince.”  
  
“Stop talking,” Victor snaps, short and harsh. He sits up and regards his brother with a critical eye. “Why are you here?”  
  
It’s a devastating turn of character but not for Yuri, who only stumbles to acclimate. They’ve been siblings for countless lifetimes now, Victor’s always been moody.  
  
“Because you left,” Yuri replies, menacing Victor with look from beneath an untidy mess of hair. “You left me. You fucking vanished Victor, and left me to find out from Yakov who was raging that you’d decided enough with being a Charm, enough with the rules.”  
  
Yuuri was right. He’s hurt.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says sincerely, dropping his hostility but not the defensive line of his shoulders. Yuri rolls his jaw and looks away. He hates to give Victor any slack because Victor is greed and consumption, not Fortune, not favor. He knows this dance of theirs, of Victor’s ridiculousness. This might be the first time in decades that Victor’s run off but it’s not the first in this flighty Charm’s existence.  
  
“You were more sensible as Adesola. That was a you who thought before she acted.”  
  
Only a lifetime ago. A rebuke whistles from Victor’s nose. “Adesewa would not have waited for me to run to have gone herself. This me is Victor and he’s tired of the cold and of passivity.”  
  
“Selfish.”  
  
“Free,” Victor corrects, turning his back to his brother and going to the top drawer of Yuuri’s dress for his clothes, the ones he bought with Yuuri to fit these long legs and this excitable body. He dresses in the silent indifference of the room.  
  
“Why him?” Yuri asks in too small a voice. _Why him over me?_ Victor can almost hear.  
  
“He makes me want to give him everything because he asks for nothing. All he wants is for me to stay. I like that. I can leave whenever I want and I don’t want to. Now come,” Victor declares, throwing a pair of Yuuri’s practice sweats. “That’ll do; run with me along the beach. You rarely play in this form; as a cat, you’ll never  be able to appreciate the beauty of the sun on the beach.”  
  
“I’ve seen the ocean wear away at sand for enough lifetimes.”  
  
“Don’t talk like that,” Victor says, smiling through the seriousness of sentiment. “We live too many lives for us to become numb to beauty.”

* * *

  
  
  
Minako’s running Yuuri through the rough sketch of a routine when a knock plays against the studio door, just making itself known over the music. She thumbs the music off; Yuuri flutters through a sequence of _tour en l’airs_ and into the next step before the absence of music and presence of knocking shakes him out of form.  
  
Minako opens the door, anticipating one of the morning students to be sniffling over some lost items, but instead Yuuri’s foreign boyfriend and another foreign boy dressed in hot pink leopard tights and a black top, hair bundled on his head and the look of a dancer quivering in the loose drape of his body.  
  
“Hi, Minako,” Victor waves cheerily and then, even more so at Yuuri, “Hi Yuuri. We aren’t here to interrupt your practice, but were wondering if me and my brother, Yurio, might join you?”  
  
Yuuri approaches wearily, grabbing his water bottle and trying to evolve into a species capable of psychic communication. Victor winks at him.  
  
“If Yuuri doesn’t mind, I don’t see why not,” Minako says slowly, looking at her student-coach for permission even though she’s already opened the door in invitation.  
  
“Thanks,” Yuri says briskly, bee lining for the bar set against the wall that doesn’t boast floor to ceiling mirrors to stretch. Minako follows after him with a critical eye.  
  
“I have a plan,” Victor whispers to Yuri, hand cupped around his ear.  
  
“Uh-huh…” Yuuri wipes sweat off the back of his neck, equally distracted but Yuri. Minako’s already fussing over him. “He can dance?”  
  
“Not as well as he could,” Victor stresses. “He learned some, better at skating, but he’s a natural at all such things. Charm of Good Grace. He’s meant to make beauty. We should take him to Ice Castle, and introduce him to Yuuko and Takeshi. Show him some fun,” Victor gushes, taking Yuuri’s sweat damp hand in his and lacing their fingers.  
  
“O-okay,” Yuuri agrees, tearing his eyes away from the broken curve of Yuri’s spine: he’s as slim as a doll. Victor’s looking Yuuri over thoughtfully, no lust as he appraises the dancewear or Yuuri’s flushed skin. Just consideration.  
  
 “I’m working on a routine for an audition,” Yuuri admits, squeezing Victor’s hand and looking down. He notices now that Victor’s in new workout clothes. “I’m not going to be a famous dancer, but you’re right, I could do more with what I love.”  
  
“Show me?”  
  
“Mhmm. Minako,” Yuuri turns away and wipes down his red face, trying to quell the immediate rush of nerves; Victor might as well be an entire theatre for how much Yuuri wants to impress him, “I’m going to show Victor what we’ve put together.”  
  
“Please do. I want to see how it looks when you’re really trying to perform.”  
  
Yuri slouches against the bar, legs kicked out and body cocked like a pistol. Whatever plan for fun victor’s laid out, Yuuri can see it’s going to take more than that to ease Yuri down from the fight he’s come brewed to have.


	8. Dance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you!!! We approach the end. All of your support has helped me write this story. It's wonderful to share the love & excitement

  
A week later, Yuuri kidnaps Victor in an attempt to save his life.  
  
But it takes a week of spending more time with Victor and making tentative motions of friendship with his brother to get to that point. It takes some fucking up.  
  
\--  
It starts with an innocent comment from Minako.  
  
“It’s not too late for you to consider a career as a dancer,” Minako told Yuri that first night in her studio.  
  
Yuuri had shown Victor the tentative beginnings of his contemporary ballet choreography which in turn incited Yuri to aggressively mimic him. This progressed to a spontaneous dance-off that roped Victor and Minako into as well. Minako’s ipod jumped from arias to pop-hits to electro-swing and so it went, four dancers converging and trembling in flung limbs and gasping smiles, circling and shaking hips and grasping hands. Yuuri ran Victor through a stumbling foxtrot around the room. Yuri allowed his brother to throw him into the air. Yuuri lifted Minako through spins and falls. It had all the forgiving looseness of a drunken rave but the memory stood clear in Yuuri’s mind, the exhilaration uncontaminated and overwhelming. He dipped Victor and kissed him like they were movie stars, like they were dying or being born, like there was rain and fireworks. Victor grinned at him, hair falling away from his face in a weep, hands holding onto Yuuri for dear life.  
  
“Careful,” Victor warned, tugging on Yuuri like he means to topple them both.  
  
“I’d never drop you,” Yuuri swore, righting Victor to his feet. Yuuri holds him by the elbow, then the wrists, and then they’re holding hands and measuring each other. Yuuri knows in his gut that Victor’s weighing the truth of Yuuri’s promise, spoken with such sudden conviction, summoned from a yearning and prideful will.  
  
Behind and around them, Minako and Yuri moved together, double-stepping, taking off. Intent upon each other, seeing futures ill-advised but possible, dreamable, neither spy the frown passing across Yuri’s face. Yuuri, despite a friendship almost as old as he is with Minako, did not see how newly she moved, the way her body returned to a swift liquid precious that she hasn’t had since she was twenty-four and the name on all dancer’s lips. Yuri flew off from her, leaving her palms empty and fingers spread after a Charm she did not know; he leapt through the air, released from gravity in his exaltation. Magic reeled in the studio, a metallic static like flinted snow and shaved aluminum, sparked heat through Yuuri and Minako’s mortal bodies.  
  
Victor knew the sensation well. He wrapped an arm around Yuuri’s waist and closed him tight to his body, a fleeting kiss to his brow and temple, a soothing hand on the raised hair along the back of his neck. Yuri let magic spill unchecked from him, reveling in it, in his own potential. He watched the impossible body of his brother dance; his own skin crackled. Victor wanted nothing more than to see his brother stretch in the potential of his ability, to have fun in this lifetime. Yuuri held onto him with a hiccup of emotion; an allegro burned the walls of the room, violins quivering and a timpani violent with rattlesnake warning.  
  
“Keep dancing,” Victor urged, kicking he and Yuuri off. He spun out and took Minako into his arms to pair her with Yuuri. Yuri whirled and whirled, flinging apart like the sun, Charm flooded the room, Grace righteous; Grace that is forgiveness for wrongs, Grace that can only come from power. His beautiful brother. They danced the day away, into night, until they were starved and exhausted. Victor lead Yuuri and Minako back to the inn, Yuri silent at his side.  
  
“I haven’t danced like that since I was in a company,” Minako told him. She regarded the evening sky without recognition.  
  
“You were lovely. I can see now where Yuuri learned it all,” Victor praised her. Yuri couldn’t conjure skill out of nothing.  
  
 Yuuri leaned into Victor’s side, grateful for his support, feeling the slow drift of magic leave him. It was the same fuzzy feeling as when Victor had put him to sleep with a brush of his fingers and the promise of his words.  
  
“Yurio,” he said to the Charm. When Yuri looked over to him, his face was soft, eyes bare of pretense. Immortal spirit or not, Yuuri saw a child there. He smiled. “What do you want to eat for dinner?”  
  
Yuri ducked his head and looked away. “I don’t care. Make me something good like last night.”  
  
Victor squeezed Yuuri’s hip but didn’t remark, smiling at the town, the faces of homes and businesses lit within.  


* * *

  
  
The prowl of the white cat among Hastesu’s streets forces an aching spring into bloom. Dark earth beats up through frosted mornings, trees loosens their pious withdrawn guard to let in the sun and sea breeze. The guests of Yu-topia brush its fur when it passes; Mari leaves her door cracked for it to join her on her bed and doze through dramas.  
  
Yuuko and Takeshi never see the cat once. Instead, they happily greet the loud-mouth boy storming ahead of Yuuri and Victor each morning. Yuri shows off constantly on the ice, racing Yuuri, making the children shriek in excitement at lessons as he lands quads.  
  
“It might be unfair for the competition, but why doesn’t he do this professionally? Start a life?” Takeshi asks Yuuri one day. Yuuko was warming up with toe loops, Yuri eyeballing her technique. Victor’s busy twirling the triplets. The moon’s a pale slip in the sky, waxing a curtsey.  
  
“He only has a few months left in this body,” Yuuri tells him, voice melancholic. “Victor told me that when Charms spend sixteen full years as people, they revert to their animal forms. Victor himself hasn’t enjoyed being a man in decades. Yuri doesn’t have a lot to look forward too.”  
  
“He looks happy now,” Takeshi says. His wife almost falls but Yuri catches her and keeps her from a bruised butt.  
  
“He can feel the clock ticking. He’s been delaying it, Victor says, for a long time. He spends most of the day as a cat.”  
  
“But not now?”  
  
“He’s having fun,” Yuuri smiles. “Victor wants to be there when Yuri turns sixteen. He’s been trying to get Yuri to accept it. It doesn’t matter how often they’re reincarnated, it’s traumatic each time.”  
  
The more Victor spoke of Yuri, the more he revealed himself to Yuuri. He wants to keep his brother with him, wherever he went, until Yuri can make his own mind up about things. Yuri still mocks Yuuri and Victor every other sentence, but he comes to their room to sleep. He says little with words, a physical creature instead. Victor’s much the same way, talking around his points, teasing and monologueing in riddle or poetry. All Yuuri knows for fact is that Victor wants to stay.

* * *

  
  
It grows when Victor makes a habit of kissing Yuuri like he never wants to leave.  
  
They sleep together every night, sometimes overrun by their own blood, clutching at each other and hoping the smell of skin is enough to pass them into oblivion while Yuri purrs on the pillow of the bedroll. They hold hands in town and share chaste kisses at the corner of streets while they wait for the light to turn. They rarely find themselves alone for more than a minute, but tonight Victor has locked the door to Yuuri’s bedroom and clung to Yuuri with a meaningful “Yuuri” and kiss to his neck.  
  
“Don’t we have to meet that….guy for…your fake ID?” Yuuri struggles to say as Victor kisses up and down the arch of his neck, herding Yuuri to the bed.  
  
Victor swore up and down that if he got a fake ID he’d never get caught and, well, Yuuri isn’t one to argue with magic. A fake ID and other fake papers would lead to a passport and Victor desperately wants to travel. His money stash will get him the papers he needs, heavily discounted by a sway of Charm. Yuuri doesn’t care if Victor gets what he wants for himself; he wants Victor to have every freedom, counterfeit or not.  
  
“We have twenty minutes,” Victor reminds him, sitting Yuuri down and crawling into his lap. He’s taller to begin with and this just makes it worse. “Let’s just kiss.”  
  
“Just kissing,” Yuuri agrees, scooting up on the bed so he can stretch out and pull Victor down against him. Victor comes eagerly, crouching over him and kissing Yuuri like he wants to bury treasure inside his mouth. Sleep will be hell tonight. With the way they sigh into each other, sleep will be a shaking thing. Yuuri rolls them over and pins Victor down with his hips, biting a groan into the delicious pink slip of his mouth when Victor jerks up against him, the beginning of an erection pressed to Yuuri’s.  
  
“Kissing,” Victor gasps, clutching a hand in Yuuri’s hair, “is amazing. Have I told you that? Kissing you is amazing.”  
  
“You’re easily pleased. You think microwave popcorn is amazing,” Yuuri misdirects with a blush.  
  
“It is!” Victor exclaims seriously. “I like the spicy flavor. I think the food keeps getting better each lifetime. Like you; you‘re so spicy, Yuuri.”  
  
“God,” Yuuri laughs. “You’re….an idiot.”  
  
Victor looks proud. Yuuri likes the look on him, but he also likes Victor less contained. Yuuri touches the taut muscle of Victor’s stomach beneath his sweater and delights in the flinch, the quiver of his skin.  
  
“I could be kissing more of y-you,“ Yuuri offers with a choke but he gets the words long thought out into the open.  
  
It isn’t only arousal that urges Yuuri to request Victor lose his top. Twenty minutes. He could spend days on Victor, but twenty minutes to worship him will have to do for now. Victor meets Yuuri’s eyes, searching, finding satisfaction in his answer. He kisses Yuuri a minute longer, kisses the tip of his nose, before he sits up to wriggle out of his top and bares himself to Yuuri. Gooseflesh spreads across his chest and arms and those ridiculously pink nipple pebbled to buttons that Yuuri, in a fit, kisses adoringly. Victor clenches his thighs around Yuuri and melts into the bed as Yuuri presses feather light kisses across his ticklish stomach, up his sternum, over his collarbone and biceps down his wrists. His skin is a shock of silk under Yuuri’s lips and when he breathes, the warmth buffers his face. Victor’s heartbeat tattoos against the long press of Yuuri’s mouth, tempo taken into teeth and bone.  
  
Yuuri takes his hands one by one and kisses Victor’s blushing palms, his thin fingers and the beds of his cuticles. He kisses Victor’s ears and his eyelashes and the silver soft hair at the small of his back and up the valley of his spine. The ribs that swell with sweet air he cradles, remembering the hollow weight of Victors swan body, the stiffness of his plumage and the down that glowed around his fingers.  
  
“You are so good,” Victor murmurs, lulled into a heightened bliss. His skin radiates a gem glow in the low light of Yuuri’s room, the laptop’s blue light casting mute shadows along the wall. “How have you not had a lover?”  
  
“Maybe you knew all along you’d find me,” Yuuri teases stupidly. Kissing isn’t hard, being sweet to Victor might just be the easiest thing that’s ever happened. It makes Yuuri dizzy and nervous but Victor’s body gives and gives into his touches. Victor had quickly eaten at the restrained bubble Yuuri kept up with the rest of the world, adamant and forthright with his affection. Once Yuuri met him head on, it was impossible to see how the Victor-occupied space might ever again be empty.  
  
“I _am_ selfish,” Victor hums. “Maybe a god favors me. You must be my gift.”  
  
“And arrogant,” Yuuri adds. He bites the back of Victor’s neck, earning a pleased grunt.  
  
Victor chuckles, sound muffled by the pillow he‘s comfortably smashed into. “I’m terrible.”  
  
“Then I’m worse for loving you.”  
  
Victor stiffens beneath him. Yuuri catches up to his words a breath later and jerks away from Victor, the brush of his lips snagged and torn away. He cups a hand over his mouth, mortified, instantly taken by a quake of sick nerves.  
  
“I didn’t mean that,” he hurries to say. “I mean - I didn’t mean to say that. I -- Victor.” He’s sitting on Victor’s ass, killing himself inside.  Victor pushes up on his elbows, making Yuuri slip to the side, and he turns his head over his shoulder, placid smile fixed on his face.  
  
“People say things in the moment they don’t mean; don’t worry," Victor says graciously.  
  
It’s wrong. It’s so wrong.  
  
“All the same, our time is up. We should go,” Victor continues. Yuuri slides off of him and stands beside the bed, watching Victor dress. Victor doesn’t look at him, busy with the buttons on his coat discarded over Yuuri’s computer chair. “Better fetch Yuri; I think I saw him shadowing your mother. He’ll be sore and unbearable if we leave him behind.”  
  
Yuuri tries to hold Victor’s hand like it’ll admit a truth he’s too scared to repeat. He thinks Victor hears it but the language is jumbled. Victor slides over bills of cash and gets an envelope of a fake life in exchange. Victor spoons him that night, face buried in the back of Yuuri’s neck, arms lead-locked around him. Yuuri was right: he doesn’t sleep.

* * *

  
  
Toshiya and Victor end up in a Shogi competition spectated by the inn’s guests. It had begun innocently enough with a regular and descended into an impromptu tournament. It’s a lot of drunk old men and a drunker Minako who joined later on and played the losers. As with all things Victor, a crowd forms, messages are sent, it’s a spectacle.  Hiroko sends Yuuri out for groceries and Yuri follows, bored with the game and Victor’s drunken stupidity.  
  
“If he doesn’t cheat with magic, he can’t play games for shit,” Yuri harrumphs. “He can’t stop himself from using magic either when he’s drunk.”  
  
Victor had been a little…much…when Yuuri had left him. The hair on Yuuri’s arms had stood on end when he’d sat down beside him, it’d been unbearable. He wondered what others thought the sensation was. They were still off-kilter from Yuuri’s slip of the tongue confession, neither broaching the subject. Victor had started whining when Yuuri said he had to run out for a bit but when Yuuri had repeated himself and slipped from Victor’s handhold, the Charm had gone thin-lipped and stiffly quiet.  
  
“I hope he pays back the bets people have waged on the game,” Yuuri says with forced lightness.  
  
“Tch. He wouldn’t take from your old man. He’ll probably put all the money to your fucking honeymoon or something gross.”  
  
Yuri had eased up on Yuuri but now his comfort among the Katsuki’s had lead to an unchecked flow of thoughts that more often than not embarrassed and strained Yuuri.  
  
“We aren’t getting married. Not remotely.”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
They drive in silence until Yuri cranks the radio and flicks through stations relentlessly, never settling on a song. The shopping goes much the same. Yuri snatches the hastily scrawled list Yuuri’s mother had given them and wanders off with the cart; it’s a lot of snacks and some beer to appease the crowds. Between the two of them, they fill the cart quickly, bickers about the flavors of dried squid aside. Yuuri’s quickly come to see Yuri as a little brother, an annoying one, but the lack of understanding that reared its insightful head didn’t detract from what seemed Yuuri’s near infinite capacity to love that matched well the hungry sponge of Yuri’s suppressed desire to be loved.  
  
“Here, wait: Victor likes marble soda. Have you tried it yet?” Yuuri points to the cold display. Yuri shrugged  but nodded for Yuri to grab him one too. “He likes guava. Do you want the same flavor?”  
  
“It’s all fine,” Yuri says, leaning against the glass door beside where Yuuri roots for a second guava flavor. He hasn’t drank these since he was a teenager. Of course Victor likes it.  
  
“Hey,” Yuri grunts, kicking his heel against the glass and slouching towards Yuuri with a meaningful cock of his brows, “whatever you want tonight, Victor could make happen.”  
  
“Why,” Yuuri questions, adding the bottles to the cart. “Because he’s drunk? He’s been drunk plenty around me. I don‘t take advantage of him.”  
  
Yuri’s face puckers. “You don’t -- you don’t have dreams? He’ll make your fortune. He’ll make you never for want again.”  
  
“Is that all Charms do, Yuri?” Yuuri asks seriously, sliding the cold display door closed with a suck of rubber and air. “Victor will make someone rich and you’ll make someone move beautifully?”  
  
Yuri bares his teeth in a catlike sneer but it’s tempered by a childish roll of his eyes. “Is that all you think we do? Me? I’ve brought your greatest artists into the world’s eye. You have no proof that Okukawa Minako wasn’t graced herself by me.”  
  
That puts Yuuri on pause. Yuri tips his chin up, taking the ground given to him. “People speak of artists and leaders all the time in terms of blessings; don’t snub the reality that they might have been, that this is how it’s always been. You have no idea who has been Charmed, how wide the influence of Charms can be. Victor acts like an idiot but he’s more powerful than you care to know; he’s a Charm that has won wars, made kingdoms. He’s old.”  
  
And Yuuri’s buying him guava flavor soda.  
  
“I didn’t ask him to be here,” Yuuri deflects, pushing the cart to the cashier.  
“Well he is. He’s trying to make your Fortune,” Yuri continues, chasing Yuuri with his words. “You prayed to him, you asked for him to bring you a blessed future.”  
  
Yuuri pulls to a halt just before checkout, turning to Yuri and practically bumping their chests together as he bears down on the boy in a low, steady tone. “I don’t want anything from Victor,” Yuuri states firmly. “I don’t want his magic, his blessings, I don’t want him to bring me money or fame or a career. I didn’t pray for him and mean it. I didn‘t want a Charm. He‘s done this himself, it‘s all been his decision.”  
  
The only thing he wants from Victor is Victor, not the Charm of Good Fortune. He wants to wake up tomorrow to him there, to go to sleep with him there, to pass the day with the knowledge that Victor would too be passing the day and they might share it together. He looks forward to the imaginary possibilities of a future he can’t have.  
  
Yuri shakes his head and bumps his way passed Yuuri. “You keep him from the world, don‘t act like you have no hand in that.”  
  
The metal handle of the cart gives nothing to Yuuri’s tight grip. The anger passes. It’s true. Yuuri has taken Victor from the game of Charm and influence that apparently works shadow magic on anything from ballet troops to world leaders. But it’s temporary. Yuri’s throwing a fit over nothing.  
  
They check out in silence and carry the plastic bags to the car. Yuuri’s phone rings as he’s buckling his seat belt, and it’s a struggle to get it out of his pocket. MARI glows on the screen before he thumbs it over to answer.  
  
“Hey, Mari. Mom need something else?” Yuuri asks preemptively.  
  
There’s no noise in the background; he expected the raucous din of the main room. His sister hesitates, just a breath over the line, and the pause stirs a settled worry fresh in Yuuri’s chest. Yuri’s tonguing the marble on his soda, breaking it loose with a pop and a rush of artificial sweetness.  
  
“Yuuri, it’s Victor," she whispers tremulously. 

And Yuuri didn't think his body could rush with fear like that, like someone had taken a mallet to his chest and plowed him bone-shatter deep.

"What's wrong? What happened to Victor?" He barks, curling forward, seatbelt stiffening against him. Yuri looks sharply over, expression wide with mirroring panic.

"He’s a swan.”  



	9. Dumb Luck

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this story is so much. its too much. omg. i hope you enjoy. there's only an epilogue left.
> 
> Omg I realize I'd put up the previous chapter Sunday. Whoops quick turn around on posts. I wanted to finish...

    The noise of the inn breaks around them when Yuuri and Yuri rush inside; Mari materializes, frantic, eyes gray with apology.  
      
“He was fine one moment and then the next he said he felt sick and hurried off to your room. I guess he knew, and didn’t want to create alarm. I felt -- there was this static tug inside me that made me follow him,” Mari recapitulates, gasping with emotion, loud and uncaring and stomping ahead of Yuuri as if to breach the room and spare them a volley of arrows. “Then it was freezing, and Victor was shifting but it looked awful. It wasn’t in a blink of an eye, it was bright and wintry and he had feathers all along his body and then seemed to crumble into the-- the swan.”  
      
Yuuri’s own witness to the transformation, the struggle and grandness of it, flies off into an imagination of pain and anguish. Why has this happened? The dreamy quality of Victor’s first appearance extends now to a desperate hope that Yuuri will open the door to his bedroom, the bedroom so long occupied by the body of another, of Victor, and find it peacefully empty. But he does not. Mari steps aside, wringing her hangs, and Yuuri and Yuri barrel into the room. Both falter at the sight of the white swan standing misplaced amid the indifferent normalcy of Yuuri’s bedroom.  
      
“Victor!” Yuuri cries, heart gouged. He really had shifted. Yuuri rushes forward to sweep the swan into his arms, blabbering uselessly. “Victor? Victor, what is this. Why--why is this? What happened?”  
      
He’s cut off by a quieter but as strained plead: “Victor?”  
  
Yuri hovers just outside of arms reach of the swan, face twisted back in shock and…loss. Of course. Victor had promised to guide Yuri into his sixteenth birthday, to stand guard by him. As much as Yuri has flustered and protested it, he hadn’t left, hadn’t spoken of leaving other than the occasional fit about how Victor needed to grow up. But now?  
  
A snap of needles around Yuuri’s hand breaks whatever humbling pity he feels. He yelps and lets go of the swan, who squalls and screeches like an untamed beast, beating his great wings and crashing about Yuuri’s room. Mari inches to the doorway and makes a grab for Yuri, tugging him back as Yuuri ducks down with his arms over his face, beaten by the body and wings of the raging swan.  
      
“Victor, cut that shit out!” Yuri barks, storming forward and slipping into his shift easily, the white cat darting from the falling mop of his clothes. There’s a yowl and some loud honking but whatever barriers exist between regular people and the Charms doesn’t exist between Charms in their shift. Yuri circles his addle-minded brother and rubs his body soothingly against the trembling folded wings of the swan, round and round like he’s closing a net and a knot, bumping his head and purring. While this goes on, Yuuri slumps on the floor, back against his bed.  
      
“Mari,” he croaks. “Could you go? And people probably heard that. Tell mom and dad to stay out there.”  
      
“Okay,” she promises, wavering in the doorway but ultimately slipping off and closing it. Yuuri shakes, tears building and falling rapidly as he watches Yuri mollify Victor. Yuuri cries, sniffling and useless, until finally Yuri deems his work done and shifts back, crouched naked next to the swan.  
      
“Fuck,” is all he says at first, one hand on Victor’s back.  
      
“Is he okay?” Yuuri manages, hugging his knees ot his chest. “Does he know what’s happening?”  
  
“No he’s not okay!” Yuri snarls, turning and shoving Yuuri off his ass. “This is your fault!”  
  
“H-how,” Yuuri sputters, grappling with Yuri’s arms, trying to dodge what is definitely a punch. “Yuri, get off!” He shoves the Charm away from him and sits up, red-faced and chest bellowing. “I didn’t do this. I’d never do this to Victor!”  
      
  
“Well you did,” Yuri snaps, voice cracking. “You rejected him, tonight, at the store. You wanted nothing to do with the Charm, this the Fortune, with his magic. How many times have you turned down his magic? Praying to him is what allowed him to be a person, so he could bring you Fortune; no shit if you keep running your mouth about not wanting it, the Charm bond will snap!”  
      
_I don’t want anything from Victor. I don’t want his magic, his blessings, I don’t want him to bring me money or fame or a career. I didn’t pray to him and mean it. I didn’t want a Charm. He’s done this himself, it’s all been his decision._  
      
Yuri sees the realization draw over Yuuri’s face. He seethes, crossing his arms defensively around his naked torso, spitting another curse before snatching up his discarded clothes and dressing in angry tugs.  
      
“I didn’t know,” Yuuri whispers, crying once more, staring at the indifferent face of the swan through a swamp of tears. “I didn’t mean it like that.”  
      
“Yeah well, magic is will and speech. There’s a lot of power in speaking and you say the stupidest shit. Look at the poor fucking bastard now. He’s not our Victor anymore. He’s the Charm of Good Fortune.”  
  
That’s right. Victor had said it many times. Being in his shifted form was like looking at the world as a painting. An impression rather than the true depth. That he was half-soul’d and half-minded.  
  
    “He’s gone?”  
  
Victor being gone…Victor not being Victor…that’s worse than anything Yuuri can think of. Victor not able to be his exuberant self? Yuuri had watched him find that self in his time here, learn how to let himself smile and not smile as his heart wanted; Victor who wanted to see and know and try everything.      
      
“He’s not _dead_ ,” Yuri scoffs, sitting down on the floor and stretching his feet out to the swan, nudging it gently. It swivels its head and considers them, honks once, a baring of needle teeth and a serrated tongue from the gape of its golden bill, before it curls its head around and tucks into itself. “He’s just…asleep. And everything’s a dream for him. No consequence, no truth. And he won’t be coming back soon. This was the first time in decades he’s been a person -- and for you. Idiot. Idiot,” he says feelingly.  
  
    “Decades,” Yuuri repeats numbly.  
  
    “Uh-huh. If you’re not dead by the time someone else who means it brings him back into personhood, you’ll be even uglier and shitting yourself. The last time was 1895.” And because he’s vicious and hurt and not sure how to hold that pain and only knows how to displace it, Yuri adds: “Serves you right. You don’t deserve him.”  
  
    Yuuri couldn’t even tell Victor that he loved him without taking it back.  
  
    “Give me your phone. I need to make an international call. I’m not paying you back either.”  
  
    It’s so out of place that Yuuri’s distracted from the greatest regret and mistake of his life. “Huh? What for?”  
  
    “To call our Keeper Yakov. You know, the man who takes care of us and deals with the bullshit? He’s in St. Petersburg and he’s pissed as hell.” Yuuri’s blatant confusion makes Yuri smack himself in the face. “God, Katsudon, you don’t know anything. He needs to fly over here and get us. It took me a month to find this backwater town.“  
  
    Yuuri hands over his phone, where Yuri punches the screen furiously. He’s keeping it together but only just, face splotchy with emotion, a continuous tremor straining his thin body. He’ll be alone for months now, until he too is taken by the duty of being a Charm in this carnation. It’s a miersbale future, made all the more miserable by the immediacy, the fact that it may have been better if Yuuri had just -- had just--  
    He’s on his knees and bowed against the floor before Victor’s body, face pressed to the wood, feeling it cool against his hot forehead.  
  
    “Victor, please come back. You can do that. You can do anything. I need you. We need you,” he begs to no avail.  
  
    Yuri’s speaking behind him on the phone, monotnous: there’s a tinny yelling voice but the call is quick. Hasetsu. Yu-Topia. Katsuki. Victor. These words bleat through the language barrier. When the call ends, and Yuuri’s words have done nothing to change the situation, he lifts his face, vision all white with feathers.  
  
    “I love him. He said we had time to figure it out. Why didn‘t he tell me this could happen?”  
  
    “You wanted Victor to tell you that you control his fate? That he needs you to need his magic in order for him to keep running around like an idiot chicken? He’d never do that. It’s beneath him. And it’s…unfair to you too. To make you responsible like that.”  
  
    Yuri blows out a breath and thumps noisily against Yuuri’s bed. Yuuri can’t find it in himself to turn away from the swan, kneeling back on his heels, riveted.  
  
    “People are always responsible for each other. If you have a relationship with someone, you take care of them,” Yuuri says. “And even strangers have a responsibility to strangers, to preserve their life, their freedom of life.”  
  
    “And what about mortals and Charms? Gods and fates? Victor wouldn’t have been able to walk away as he was when you stopped wanting him around, and he couldn’t blackmail you into preserving him.”  
  
    It clicks. Victor’s stiff face when Yuuri had said he’d loved him, said it and apologized, took it back. Victor had forgiven Yuuri knowing, what, that mortals are fickle? That it couldn’t be? But he’d held onto Yuuri that night like he never wanted to let go. He’d hugged them tight enough to weld their bones and heartbeats into one, kissing him goodnight and kissed him good morning, hand on his cheek, saying “wait” when Yuuri had risen for work, saying “wait” and kissed him goodbye.  
  
    He’d known. Hadn’t he? That sooner rather than later the spell would break.  
  
    He bites down on his knuckles and drops away from the swan, coughing on a throttled sob in his throat. Yuri slides a nearly sympathetic look at him and, haltingly, reaches out to drape his arm over Yuuri’s shoulders.      
  
    “This carnation is too romantic, too feeling. I would’ve liked him to live it out here and die just to be rid of Victor. I should have seen this heart on the sleeve persona coming after our last lifetime.”  
  
    Victor doesn‘t talk about his past, his past selves. He‘s presented it as a very hush-hush matter, waving it off and saying he doesn‘t remember it much anyway, and Yuuri shouldn‘t poke his nose into the affairs of Charms. Not for mortals! He would claim, heart-lips plucked into their next eager motion of speech and smile and kiss.  
  
    “Who was he before now?” Yuuri asks. If this is farewell, if this is a leaving, he wants to know as much about what he will mourn as possible.  
  
    “Last time? Her name was Adesola. Now that was a Charm of Good Fortune. She was a Hare, a bit wicked, a little biased in her blessings. But her influence was beautifully wound in the world.”  
  
    Yuri sounds fond, remembering. Yuuri peaks over at him, thawed by the good tone.  
  
    “And you, Yuri?”  
  
    Yuri stretches again, clicks his feet together, boney ankles bumping with a dull tap.  
  
    “My name was Adesewa. We were a pair, when we were together. A cobra and a hare; I liked that life far more than this. You wouldn’t have stood a chance against Adesola and I…She would have made your Fortune and moved along without a blink. And I…the beautiful people I enchanted. I remember how Adesewa felt, being her. How my hips moved…not like this body. I don’t…”  
  
His voice cuts off, restarts more quietly  “You know we die. As people. We have to die as people. And just because we’re Charms doesn’t always mean its peaceful. Machinations greater than our influence work in this world and its will and magic and love that compels us……she died first. She, Victor, always dies first, too.…always leaving me behind,” Yuri finishes with a tremble and then he‘s gone, dashing to the door and flinging it open only to leave behind his empty clothes as a white cat vanishes.  
  
    Minutes crawl by, Yuuri slipping in and out of tears. He’s sick to his stomach, aching with early grief. He doesn’t both undressing or brushing his teeth when he finally heaves his stiff body off the floor and drops into bed. It’s then that the swan moves, lifting its head, stretching its slender neck to peer at him through the dark. With a soft toot, it flaps its wings and joins him in bed, settling onto his chest as it had weeks ago.  
  
    “You don’t know me anymore,” Yuuri tells the swan. He snakes a hand out to brush the silky chest. “You’re not Victor anymore.”  
  
    But it’s the swan from before, compelling, warmth and solid. Victor’s in there, somewhere.  
  
    “Thank you,” Yuuri whispers. His eyes burn and his jaw clicks as he grunts back more crying. “Thank you so much for the happiness you gave me. I should have done better by you, Victor. I’m an idiot…but thank you.”  
  
    He doesn’t think he’ll sleep, how could he possibly, but the bird barks softly at him, a gargle of noise, ruffles itself up and like that, Yuuri’s out.

 

  
  
    Victor’s still a swan when Yuuri wakes up for work. Time’s already rushing onwards. Yuri isn’t to be seen, but his mother hands him a note from the young Charm: Yakov will be in Fukuoka airport this evening. They’re to meet him and go.  
  
    “I’m sorry,” Hiroko whispers to the mask plastered over her son’s face. The mouth hole moves: Me too.  
  
    “Let’s go to the studio one last time, Victor. Maybe you can bless my students before you go,” Yuuri says as he gathers his bag for work. What else can he do? He can’t stop living. He won’t curl up and cry all day. He’d known this was coming. “I’ll have to tell Minako we broke up.”  
  
    He laughs bitterly. At least now when he talks to the swan, he doesn’t feel so crazy. There’s a person inside. It’s worse, this way. His steady motions slow, halt. The happiness he’d had with Victor isn’t gone. He can’t look at this as a loss. No, well: tis better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all, right?  
  
    “Thank you,” he tells the swan again, this time dry-eyed and smiling. “Thank you so much.”  
  
    He folded his tights and shoves them into his bag, crinkling something thick. Yuuri pulls out the envelope with Victor’s new fake ID. It knocks Yuuri down, and thank god for the chair waiting to fit his ass.  
  
    Victor Nikiforov.  
  
It’s just a plain license from Russia, to a St. Petersburg address. Must be where Yakov lives. Yuuri turns it over in his hand, digging the plastic edges into his palms. Victor Nikiforov. Twenty seven. He picked Christmas for his birthday? Was that really it? It makes Yuuri laugh. He should have expected something like that, maybe a new year baby….

.

.

.  
  
    “Setsubun!”  
  
Yuuri flings himself at his computer and tabs between the zillion web pages that have accumulated from his, Victor and Yuri’s use. The Setsubun festival in Fukuoka is today. Yuuri spins on his chair and faces Victor.  
  
    “I believe in luck,” he testifies, pointing at the swan. The bird does nothing. Yuuri gets to his feet and paces around his room. “Victor. Victor Nikiforov. You really wanted to be a person. That’s not fair. God, you’re not fair. Wicked demon. You’re a wicked demon with a -- with a case of bad luck!” Yuuri stomps his foot, huffing. “And you know what, it was pure luck that we met. Absolutely nothing but chance. You did fall out of the sky, you big turkey.”  
  
    He dumps the contents of his bag on the floor, packs a pair of sweats, his wallet, and then picks up the swan. “I really need some of your magic to make this work, Victor.”  
    

* * *

  
  
The station’s crowded when Mari drops him off, and the platform too. A lot of people are taking the trip out to Fukuoka, but it takes a few stops for it to get completely awful. Yuuri keeps Victor in his big dance bag, trapped to his front and arms held protectively around it. People don’t bother them or fall into them. Yuuri keeps up a whispered one-sided conversation the whole time, skin prickling with the aura of the Charm.  
  
    “I wanted just Victor this whole time, you know. I like us walking around and chatting to people. And I liked going to teach ballet and ice skating more and more, not just because you were there laughing with me but because it felt more meaningful. You wanted that didn’t you? You liked making tea and soaking in the springs and getting to be lazy and then going for a run. You’ve never gotten to have a whole life. You only get tastes. I think that freaked me out more than the fact that I fell in l-love with you. I’ve been thinking, how open you are because you know you won’t get to keep it, right? You don’t have time to be nervous, but you were, when I said I loved you…because you love me too. All this time I’d been preparing for you to leave, when I should have been working harder to keep you with me.  
  
    It’s good it was luck, just plain dumb luck, that did this to us. Not fate. Do you know what that means? It means this is by choice. You’ve slipped out of influence and fate and gods because you ran away. You, when you were still a swan, woke up. You don’t need me to channel your will or your magic, Victor. You’re old, you’re powerful, you can do this. I want you back. Yuri wants you back. I think he needs you…I don’t need you Victor but I want you. I’m going to keep wanting you too, I’ll make you feel wanted and loved. I can do that.”  
  
When they hit the festival, Yuuri unzips most of his bag so Victor is exposed but secure. He feels silly, blushing the whole while, but he spends 10,000 yen to buy soybeans for two. He’s got his luck and Victor’s to cleanse. The swan is still and silent and it seems people think he’s fake, a stuff toy if hyper-realistic. Yuuri takes the blessing. Drums pound through the air, and the echo of them reminds him of the hum-beat of magic that marks Victor’s transformations.  
      
It’s going to work. He’s sure of it.  
They pass into the mouth of the otafuku, her benevolent expression ushering them into a new state. He throws his beans in the shadow passage to the shrine, shouting: Good Luck In, Evil Spirits Out! Children shout beside him. Priests dot the crowds.  
      
Yuuri swears the drums grow in number, their mallets a wave of noise overlapping and cocooning the grounds.  
  
    Holding Victor close, he hurries along through the passage and out. He walks Victor through the festival, past good smelling food stalls, around a near constant rain of beans. He can see past the shrine the festival stage where a costumed troop dances in the regalia of the seven deities of good luck and fortune.  
  
    Yuuri watches them before striking out for the statues that plot the grounds. He makes his rounds, praying to each one on Victor’s behalf, trickling handfuls of beans over the swan’s back; they slide off to the ground with a tinkle of noise lost amongst the cacophony of the crowds. He does this until he runs out of beans, and he still has a swan in his arms.  
    

It was supposed to work. 

  
“At least I took you to the festival like I promised,” Yuuri sighs, stroking the swan’s glossy head. He bites the inside of his cheek, shoulders shaking. He’d really believed…he was an idiot.  
      
He buys Mari and Minako a small bottle of ginger sake on the way out and makes his way slowly down the stairs, back through the otafuku. It’s late and cold and he has fifteen missed calls from Mari. Yakov would have landed and he’s probably on a train from Fukuoka to Hasetsu. Yuuri could have spared him the trip. But he's glad he didn't even if it didn't bring Victor back. Somewhere inside, Victor got one more day of being looked at as a person and not just a Charm.   
  
     Yuuri stumbles out of the mouth of the otafuku and into a patch of moonlight. A clatter of gongs pounds his head. His chest and shoulders jerk forward painfully and he pitches to his feet, falling into another body, catching his palms on the sidewalk and scraping them raw. He doesn’t register the pain, too busy being choked by octopus arms around his neck.  
  
    “Yuuri! It‘s so cold!” Victor complains, stuffing his face under Yuuri’s jaw and shivering. Yuuri’s bag had ripped clean in half from the transformation and Yuuri has the sense to grab the baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants to bring around Victor, trying to cover him. It’s clumsy, with Yuuri balling his eyes out and laughing at the same time and Victor very reluctant to let go.  
  
    “Pants. Victor, you need p-pants, p-please. People are l-looking. Victor. Victor. Victor!”  He's never been happier to be dealing with a naked Victor and can't imagine how it could ever be a better sight.  
  
Victor relents long enough for Yuuri to get him dressed, and they already have a crowd and they really need to be getting a move on. Victor’s dazed, clutching at Yuuri, trembling in aftershock. Yuuri kneels down in front of him and lifts his naked foot up, brushing dirt from tbe bottom and rolling a sock onto his foot. Victor holds Yuuri’s shoulder for balance.  
      
“How am I here again?” Victor murmurs, pressing down into the sneaker Yuuri’s wedging his foot into.  
  
“Dumb luck.” Yuuri grins up at him, face split wide enough that his cheeks ache. His hands are tacky with blood and scraped. He can almost imagine that, rather than from falling, its from praying so hard. “Dumb luck.”

Victor helps him to his feet, taking his hands and turning the palms over. "We need to get these washed," Victor says, stroking the back of Yuuri's hands gently.

"I love you," Yuuri says instead.

Victor jerks his head up, eyes wide, mouth open with surprise. He doesn't have time to prepare his face.

"I love you," Yuuri repeats. "And I don't know if that's enough to keep you here, or if you feel the same way, I think you do, but you're here right now as Victor and I'm going to do my best to k-keep you here, not here-here, but here as Victor, so you can live as you want--"

Victor takes his fingers away from Yuuri's lips once he's sure Yuuri's stopped rambling and, after a searching look, he leans in and kisses Yuuri, lips dry and soft, there and gone.

"Thank you," he says, brushing Yuuri's hair back and straightening his glasses. He looks peaceful, at home in his skin, under the moonlight, cold nipping his nose red. "Thank you for bringing me back...just don't tell anyone it was a matter of luck, okay? That's not good for my reputation."  
   

Victor finds a money clip on the ground on the walk back to the train station. Yuuri decides it's as good a time as ever to tell him Yakov is waiting in Hastetsu.


	10. end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i forgot i had to write an epilogue. anyway thank you for joining me in this. it was my first crack of yoi. since starting it i feel like i understand the characters even better and hope to do more work for the fandom. thank you for all of the support.
> 
> please join me at stillmadaboutpetra.tumblr.com for any and all yoi talk. i need friends in the fandom! <3

Yakov Feltsman looks a bit like the bad guy in a movie. His scowls sits etched into his face, an unimpressed glower that strips the flesh from the bones of lesser mortals.

“Yakov!” Victor greets joyously, dancing through the threshold of Yu-Topia with no indication of previous suffering. Yuri knocks over and breaks a cup of tea in his disbelieving leap to his feet.

“I thought you were a swan,” Yakov says in a gruff tone, faintly admonishing, moreso curious; he wraps his arms around a jubilant and cuddly Victor regardless of whatever expectations he arrived in Japan bearing.

“He was,” Yuri insists, voice thin. His wide terribly young eyes swivel between a very person-looking Victor and a quiet Yuuri. “How?”

At the commotion, Mari bursts in from the kitchen, hair pulled back, stress drawn in ragged lines beneath her eyes. She spies Victor, then Yuuri, and nearly drops with relief. “Yuuri – brought him back.”  
  
Victor perks in Yakov’s arms, blinking owlishly at Mari. “Oh, Mari; did I scare you?”

“Yes,” she barks, “dummy. Don’t do that again! Y-yuuri can’t take that,” she scolds, face hot. Tearful relief pinches her face unkindly and before Yuuri can make it across the room to her, she dives off, shouting behind her: “I’m glad the turkey is back!”

It’s a lot. Victor’s calling after Mari, Yakov is patting his cheeks and telling him to be quiet, Yuuri’s frozen in place, overhwlemed, and Yuri stomps his foot on the ground. There are a few other patrons who are enraptured as well; what is this nonsense about the pretty foreign man and young Katsuki?

“How?” Yuri demands once more, shaking. He doesn’t lack joy, but it’s stifled under a world-ending uncertainty.  “You brought him back. How.”

Yuuri bites his lips together, rolling teeth over flesh pulpy with how many kisses Victor had laved upon him on the train ride home. Victor speaks for him, voice even, low with reverence.

“Love.”

Yuri takes one look at his older brother, at the serious and smitten glow about him, and gags.

 

 

They take Yuri with them. It’s barely a question, and Yuri only pretends to be annoyed by the idea. Yakov lets them go with complaint, mostly berating both of the Charms, threatening to die on them or lose his hair; they in turn hug him and tut over his health and remind him politely that he’s as immortal as they are and why doesn’t he take a vacation; he reminds them bitterly that he has a pack of other troublesome Charms spread about the world that need looking after; oh right, right; and Katsuki, you know what you’re getting into?; not at all.

Yuuri has very little knowledge about what he’s getting into. But they go to Tokyo and take their time in the city. Yuri runs away from them in the crowded streets, a cellphone in his hands, and Yuuri walks Victor through the complexes of architectural and technological feats, for all the shoulder-bumping crowds as if they are alone. He's never quite sure if Victor will remain Victor in the morning, but they go to sleep each night exhausted and full of life.

Yuuri too stops rejecting the essential feature of Victor’s existence that is the fortune that follows and flows from him. Their passage is always easy, their pockets always running. The weather turns on them sometimes, and each sour raining day delights Yuuri. He takes his medication, he sometimes goes nights with fretful sleep, he drifts in and out of conversations; but he’s light. Victor’s hand is warm. And the world conquerable.

Yuri and Victor both make the mistake of thinking Yuuri’s fortune had been Victor all along, that it had been love.

Yuuri, knowing without knowing, sees it differently: happiness. Broad and mutable happiness. It just involves magic, is all.

 

 

So their days tick by. Yuri spends most hours as a boy, bratty, loud and solemn in turn. He sleeps as a cat, preserving his time with them as he is. But it weighs on him, it weighs on Victor and expectedly, Yuuri.

Victor Nikiforov with some excellent paperwork, after three months, gets a passport thank to Yakov and a great deal of fortune. He, Katsuki Yuuri, and their precious cat, fly to Russia. Yakov’s visiting another Keeper, a severe woman named Lilia.

“Y-you’re,” Yuuri stutters.

“Yes,” she replies, cold and prim. “I am not so wrapped up in the affairs of Charms to waste the potential for art.”

They stay for a long time in her expansive home. They dance, almost endlessly. Yuuri’s reborn under her whip-hot critiques, spending more time sweating in ballet tights than he’s ever done in Victor’s embrace. Yuri too takes a keen interesting in ballet; Victor relearns St. Petersburg in this century, trolling its streets with Yakov, breathing it’s crisp air.

“He’ll be sixteen soon,” Yakov reminds. “He should stay with me.”

“Let him decide,” Victor argues, sage in this newfound life.

 

 

Yuri runs away. 

 

It’s a poor chance of finding a Charm that truly desires to be hidden. Yuuri follows Victor who follows a hunch. It’s two month’s after Yuri’s fled, and by this time Victor guesses that Yuri must have changed over, must have hit his sixteenth year, when Yuuri’s phone rings with an unknown number.

  
“Hello?”

He’s eating lunch with Victor in a café, earth turning warm with day all around them.  There’s a long pause on the line before a man’s voice, very polished, very polite, speaks to him in English.

“I adopted a cat that’s now a boy. He said you would be a good person to speak to.”

“Is he a brat named Yuri who ran away from his fathers,” Yuuri demands to know, unleashing what seems like a lifetime’s worth of fear and anger into one breath, “making us worried sick! – yes, Victor, it’s someone calling about Yuri—“  
  
“Yuri! Yuri, why did you run away!?”

“My name is Otabek Altin. I’m a figure skater in Almaty. He – okay, Yuri--“

There’s a scuffle of noise and then Yuri’s there, nearly breathless with emotion, a tight high pitch of voice. He’s speaking in rapid Russian, so Yuuri hands over the phone to Victor who all but throws himself across the table.

“I followed him home from a studio. He’s beautiful and powerful and so stiff in the shoulders, Victor, you wouldn’t believe. I didn’t think anything of it when he took me  in, but then – oh it was after one of his practices and in his arms, I came back! I came back – I was – it was – Beka, please,” and then before Victor can cry his relief, that new voice returns.

“I feel like I’m dreaming. It would be a kindness to both of us if you and katsudon?” Otabek stumbles over the nickname and Victor rolls his eyes, “were to come to my home. I’ll text you. I’m not sure…what is happening. But I think I’m very lucky.”

So it goes.


End file.
